


Reputations.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, I wrote this for thirteen-year-old me, Miscommunication, Post-Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon Jinn Lives, Self-Esteem Issues, Suicidal Ideation, but you can read it too I guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 23:23:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18927076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: Defeating a Sith Lord before losing your Padawan braid, that’s a difficult reputation to live up to.





	1. Chapter 1

Obi-Wan Kenobi does not realize that he has acquired a reputation until he returns to the Temple for the first time after Naboo.  

Garen meets him at the landing platform and greets him with a shout of welcome.  “There you are,” Garen says, laughing. He walks with Obi-Wan across the platform.  “The legend himself. They’re all talking about you in there.”

Obi-Wan is barely attending.  He is exhausted. His only thoughts on the journey back to Coruscant had been of Qui-Gon, reportedly conscious for the first time since his injury in the halls of healing, and of ensuring Anakin’s safe delivery to Ali-Alann, and of finishing the mission report of Naboo before the ship’s docking procedures.  “Talking about me? Why?” he asks, alarmed.

“Well,” says Garen, “We’ve all heard that you killed Sith lord.  And no one knows how.”

Obi-Wan stops.  “That was supposed to be confidential,” he says in dismay.

Garen looks at him, incredulous.  “There was never a chance of confidentiality,” he says.  “Not when Qui-Gon described the Sith in question to anyone who would listen when he woke up after his surgeries.”

“So everyone knows,” says Obi-Wan with a sinking feeling.

Garen slings an arm around his shoulder.  “Everyone knows,” he confirms.

 

 

Qui-Gon had already been transferred to a medical ship enroute to Coruscant when Obi-Wan had been Knighted in the fields of Naboo by Depa Billaba and Yoda.  When he looks back on the memory, it feels thin, almost transparent. More like the remnants of a dream that fades as soon as you wake up than an event that had actually happened.  Like his memories of fighting the Sith.  The Council reviewed the security footage and confirmed that Obi-Wan had delivered the final blow, so he supposes that he must have done it.  But Obi-Wan does not feel like someone who bisected a Sith lord.  He wonders if he ever will.    

Obi-Wan had always thought that once he became a Jedi Knight, he would finally feel as though he was part of something greater than himself.  Now he is a Knight. But as he walks through the halls of the Temple, pretending not to notice the stares and whispers, he only feels more like an outsider than when he was an unspoken-for initiate, or a prodigal apprentice on probation after Melida/Daan.

Defeating a Sith Lord before losing your Padawan braid, that’s a difficult reputation to live up to. 

Now he walks through the Temple halls, and recieves nods of greeting from some, and smiles from others that know him better.  Adi Gallia stops him outside the conservatory with a hand on his shoulder.

“You are a credit to the Order, Obi-Wan,” says Adi.  “We are all proud.”

Obi-Wan gives her a polite, bewildered smile.  He is not used to being stopped in the halls to be congratulated for extraordinary feats he is still not quite sure he actually performed.  He is not sure that Adi knows what she is talking about.  “Thank you,” he says anyway.  

Somehow Obi-Wan Kenobi finds that he has gone from being the problem Padawan who had caused the Council so much concern to being considered the very model of a Jedi Knight, the one whom creche-masters point out to their charges when they catch a glimpse of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the halls of the Temple -

 _That’s Obi-Wan Kenobi.  He killed a Sith lord._  

If those younglings had asked what his secret to success had been, Obi-Wan would not have known how to answer.  He cannot take much credit for the Sith lord on Naboo. Qui-Gon had fought the Sith as much or more; all Obi-Wan had done was to deal the final blow.  He might have answered with something pompous like, _I simply followed the Force’s guidance, as in all things._  The truth is that he simply does not know.  

He suspects it was pure blind luck.

As an initiate, Obi-Wan had not had perfect grades.  He had not been selected for the most advanced lightsaber classes, or won the most sparring sessions.  He had been competent. He had been - well - average. And in a Temple filled with the brightest students, average had never seemed to be good enough.  Average had certainly not been good enough to get him chosen by any Master.

Those younglings would no doubt be surprised to learn that Obi-Wan, even after achieving Knighthood, still feels like a passed-over initiate.

But perhaps it had not been Obi-Wan’s mediocracy or his mistakes that had caused all those potential Masters to look away from him, that had caused Qui-Gon to shake his head so many times before finally agreeing to take him on as an apprentice.  Perhaps it was something about Obi-Wan himself that was unworthy. Certainly if Qui-Gon had known of some of the things Obi-Wan had thought and felt over the years, he would not have found Obi-Wan worthy of Jedi training.  Things like  _Why can’t you just tell me what you’re thinking, when you find a way to tell everyone else?  Why couldn’t you have wanted me?_   _Why couldn’t you have loved me, what is so wrong with me that you couldn’t bring yourself to love me?_

But how could he have asked for more, after Qui-Gon had given him so much?  Qui-Gon has given enough. He has put so many years, so much effort into Obi-Wan’s training.  All Obi-Wan had ever wanted was to be a Jedi Knight, and Qui-Gon had made it happen. Obi-Wan knows he should be content with that.  

Now here he is, a Jedi Knight.  And Obi-Wan is finding that it is almost nothing like he had expected at all.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As a knight, Obi-Wan will make whatever sacrifices the Council will ask it of him, and never say a word against them. Obi-Wan will go cheerfully to his own death, with a lighthearted quip and a smile on his lips. Oh, Qui-Gon knows him. He has seen Obi-Wan do this before. How many times had he offered himself up in the years Qui-Gon has known him? And not for the first time, he wonders what is it about his apprentice that is so easily resigned to sacrifice.

Qui-Gon Jinn has, in recent years, developed a reputation for having trained a perfect Jedi knight.  The general consensus is that this is rather surprising, given that it is Qui-Gon Jinn who did the training.   

Qui-Gon is not often at the Temple these days, but he does hear the rumors that go around.  Perhaps the others believe that he is not the type to listen to gossip, and that is true, but he is aware enough of what others say about Obi-Wan.  He has overheard conversations in the hallways and dojos that make him glow silently with pride.

He has heard of the reputation Obi-Wan has been developing.  A consummate Jedi, others have said to him, patient and generous, diligent and efficient.  Loyal to a fault.  He hears other Jedi call Obi-Wan unflappable, hears of his reputation for self-possession and Qui-Gon almost smiles.  Never impatient, never annoyed, they say; never angry, never tired, never in need of assistance, always with everything under control.  Never a hair out of place, never anything but calm and polite. But Qui-Gon can still remember the boy who grew flustered at a compliment, who put so many tears in his robes that Qui-Gon would stay up at nights sewing them back together.   

“You must be proud, Master Jinn,” they all say, and he is, oh, he is, but his heart aches whenever he remembers the imperfect boy that this perfect knight used to be.  Decidedly imperfect. Impatient and easily frustrated, brash. Stubborn, too. Some days Qui-Gon misses that boy so much he can hardly stand it.

Knights receive a certain kind of high-risk mission, Qui-Gon knows, grueling, exhausting work.  Long-term posts on warring worlds, where violence and death is a probability, not a possibility.  And recently knighted Jedi accept these missions with a cheerful aplomb, ready to go out into the galaxy and make their mark on these worlds.  Qui-Gon has overheard a crowd of knights recently returned from successful missions, crowding inside training salles, eager to boast over their latest close call and show off to each other their latest battlescars.  

It’s a kind of rite of passage that the older knights and masters tolerate.  After all, they are young, in the best shape of their lives. They are capable of great feats, and have earned distinction in their ranks.  Let them show off, before they become battle-weary and hardened to the galaxy’s injustices. Let them have their fun.

Qui-Gon has never seen Obi-Wan in these crowds of jostling, eager knights.  Obi-Wan has never been the kind to talk himself up or boast of his accomplishments.  But it worries Qui-Gon that Obi-Wan seems to be set apart from the other knights. Perhaps Obi-Wan prefers to keep his distance.  Or perhaps, Qui-Gon worries, he is set apart from the other knights, simply on the unusual circumstances of his knighting.  Being the first Jedi to defeat a Sith lord in a thousand years is not a deed easily forgotten.  And it would not be the first time other students had held him at arm's length.  There had been talk about him, after Bruck Chun’s death. The Temple rumor mill could be harsh. Qui-Gon had tried to keep them out of the Temple as much as possible for months after the investigation so Obi-Wan did not have to hear the worst of what was said about him.

These days Obi-Wan has a reputation for accepting a certain kind of mission.  The Council must earmark certain missions that come in through the Temple with young Kenobi in mind.  Lost-cause missions. Missions doomed to fail. Missions where the unspoken mandate is not the successful completion of negotiations, but rather staying alive.  Missions that require a deft touch and every form of diplomatic solutions - including the aggressive kinds. The Council has begun to give these missions to Obi-Wan, knowing that if any knight can make a success out of these doomed missions, it is him.  

Qui-Gon had heard on his last mission, Obi-Wan had been taken as a hostage to as part of an uprising by a faction on Ryloth. He had asked Obi-Wan about it, later, on one of the rare occasions they had both been in-Temple.  

“It’s not as bad at it sounds,” said Obi-Wan, reassuringly. “I went willingly.”

“Then it’s worse than it sounds,” Qui-Gon had said, aghast.  But Obi-Wan had only looked at him, puzzled.

“It was the only way to open up negotiations,” Obi-Wan said, sounding mildly bemused. “You always said,  _Go where the mission takes you_.  Well, this time the mission took me in restraints to a heavily-fortified underground holding cell.”  And he managed to sound faintly amused by the memory.

Now every time Obi-Wan leaves on another of his lost-cause missions, it fills Qui-Gon’s heart with a nameless, formless dread.  It slips back inside him with every late-night priority message sent over his comm link, with every unexpected Council summons. He waits outside the doors of the Council chamber with that dread rising in his chest.  He imagines being called in before the Council, before the beings that know him so well. Feeling Mace’s solemn, steady gaze upon him, Adi’s quiet regret. Watching a recording that lists Obi-Wan among the dead and missing after a battle.  Hearing the words _His body could not be recovered_ , and then Qui-Gon must go the rest of his days with a stubborn heart that keeps insisting _what if_ and the knowledge that he will never know if Obi-Wan is truly dead, or worse, _His body was recovered,_ and the finality of a broken heart.  

Obi-Wan nearly dies on Alderath.  Qui-Gon does not find out until several days afterward, when the battle is long over.  Mace corners him in an empty hall and tells him, with rather more gentleness than Qui-Gon is used to seeing from his old friend.  

“Why are you telling me this?” Qui-Gon demands.  He is shaken, rocked to the very core. He would have thought that if Obi-Wan had been that close to death, if Obi-Wan had been in trouble - that he would have felt it, that he would have sensed it, sensed anything.  But he had not. Their connection has always been tenuous, clouded. Through the years it has strengthened and faltered, grown with sudden intensity in leaps and bounds, and gone silent. There is some distant unhappiness on Obi-Wan’s part that Qui-Gon has never quite been able to understand.  It comes and goes.

Mace gives him a sharp look.  “Because I thought you ought to know,” he says levelly.  He adds, meaningfully, “The Council is concerned.”

“As well they should be,” Qui-Gon snaps.  As he should be. Obi-Wan has always been ready and willing to sacrifice himself.  Qui-Gon worries about that, has always worried about this tendency of Obi-Wan’s, to place himself between everyone else, anyone else and danger.  Obi-Wan has protected countless beings across the galaxy. He has stood between death and destruction. He has pushed and pulled Qui-Gon out of peril more times than he can recall.  So many times Qui-Gon has had to catch his breath in relief after another close call, after another risky maneuver, closed his eyes against his own fear. So many times he has let out a silent breath in relief each time Obi-Wan comes back from a mission unharmed.

Qui-Gon remembers trying to talk to him about it, once.  He had tried to gently explain that he was the master, he was the one who ought to be protecting Obi-Wan, not the other way around.

He had been met with Obi-Wan’s stubborn frown.  “How am I supposed to be a Jedi knight, if I stand aside when others are at risk?” he argued.  

As a knight, Obi-Wan will make whatever sacrifices the Council will ask it of him, and never say a word against them.  Obi-Wan will go cheerfully to his own death, with a lighthearted quip and a smile on his lips. Oh, Qui-Gon knows him. He has seen Obi-Wan do this before.  How many times had he offered himself up in the years Qui-Gon has known him? And not for the first time, he wonders what is it about his apprentice that is so easily resigned to sacrifice.

He remembers Obi-Wan’s eager face, the day he had left on his first mission as a knight.   “You took me back. Even though you didn’t have to,” said Obi-Wan softly. “I’ve always been grateful.  And- I hope I can live up to your training. I won’t let you down, Master.”

How Qui-Gon’s heart had ached at those words.  He had not known what to say to Obi-Wan in that moment.  Perhaps the problem was that that there was simply so much to tell him, so much that Qui-Gon has left unsaid, year after year.  

Now all those unsaid words have built up into a feeling that seems almost insurmountable.  

There are so many words he could have spoken to Obi-Wan in that moment.   _You have never failed me, Padawan.  You never could._

Qui-Gon has a reputation for never backing down from a fight.  But for all the many battles he has fought, the wars he has won, all the commendations for bravery in the field that he has received from the Council, he can admit to himself that he is a coward at heart.  He cannot come close to saying all the things Obi-Wan ought to hear.  So- as usual - he said nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can face explosions and blaster burns, aching muscles and scorched robes, sleepless nights in prison cells on Outer-Rim worlds, the controls of a starship disintegrating under his hands and plunging into freefall. He can handle forty-seven Rodian insurgents with blasters pressed into the back of his neck, Hutts and shadow agents and hand grenades, but Obi-Wan Kenobi falters at the possibility of failure.

**** At the Temple, they say that Obi-Wan Kenobi has a talent for turning even the most mundane missions into interesting ones.  Lately he has ended up with missions that go from ordinary to extremely, violently interesting far too quickly for his liking.  

_Nar Shaadda, Alderath, Ryloth, Niran._

Obi-Wan closes his eyes briefly and counts his missions he has been assigned since becoming a Knight, one by one.  So far, he has been able to complete each mission that the Council has assigned him. I can do it again, Obi-Wan reassures himself.

Obi-Wan goes over the mission objectives, again and again, and when he has reviewed them thoroughly, he goes through the data he has received.  Again. History. Topographical maps. Cultural taboos. This is an important mission, he knows.  It is imperative that he have as much information committed to memory as possible.  He has spent the last twelve hours in transit studying his materials. He has already memorized the content, but...

He opens the mission briefing file on his datapad again.

Obi-Wan has spent the first few years of his knighthood in a state of constant, low-level panic.   It was though he had taken a deep breath when he stepped out onto the planet for his first mission and he has been holding it ever since, afraid to breathe out.   He could not have faced returning to the Temple if a mission ended in disaster. Not after what he had said to Qui-Gon, the day he left.

Qui-Gon had recovered enough to be there at the Temple’s loading dock to see him off on his first mission, but he had been barely able to stand.  His months in the healing ward had not been smooth. And the Council had refused to allow him to train Anakin, though they had conceded that the boy needed training of some kind.  Obi-Wan knew he was still smarting from that verdict.

Obi-Wan had hoped for...well, something.  Words of advice, perhaps; encouragement. Some indication that Qui-Gon truly thought him ready for this.  But what had actually happened was that when Qui-Gon had simply placed his hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder and squeezed gently.   He did not seem to have much to say, so Obi-Wan had babbled on distractedly, and made a fool out of himself.

“I won’t fail you, Master,” Obi-Wan had promised.  “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

The memory causes Obi-Wan to groan silently.  That was a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep.

On his last mission, he had begun by investigating spice smuggling routes and ended up rescuing children, kidnapped by slavers and gone underground, the forgotten, unwanted citizens of Outer Rim worlds.  He had worked for months, investigating tips and vague information to track down their location. He had found them living in a windowless room under a spaceport on Nar Shaddaa, living off trash in the dark underground.

That had been a difficult mission.  He could still remember the way one young girl’s hair had flashed gold in the sunlight when she stepped outside for the first time in eight months. She had closed her eyes against the too-bright glare and cried silently.

Hsunni. Her name had been Hsunni, and she had worn her golden hair in tight knots above her ears.  He had dreamed about those children every night for weeks afterward.

How he had wished for Qui-Gon on that mission.  To confirm that his logic was sound, that the information he retrieved was accurate, to pause in the middle of a frustrating mission that seemed to be going nowhere to take him by the shoulders and say _Let us review what we know_.  To tell him the right words to say to a frightened child who could not remember sunlight, to show him the right way to pick up another who did not have the strength to walk.

Obi-Wan has saved planets from ecological terrorism, toppled corrupt governments, rescued babies.  None of these missions had been enough to make him feel like a knight. He counts all his successful missions at night, rolls them around on his tongue, whispers them under his breath.  It helps, but it is not enough. Some days he wakes up in a strange bunk or sleepcouch on another strange world and wonders if killing the Sith had simply been a fluke.

Success on one mission is not a guarantee that he will not fail on another.

Obi-Wan can picture, all too vividly, what would happen should he make a mistake and cause a mission to fail.  Receiving a transmission in hyperspace enroute back to Coruscant, earmarked URGENT. A prerecorded message requesting his presence in front of the Council.  He would find no allies on the Council. They have been watching him closely since he was a thirteen on probation, for having left the Order on Melida/Daan, a prodigal apprentice remaining behind on a hostile world, and again, only months later, indicted for the death of another student.  He can imagine himself receiving the Council’s admonitions. The shame he would feel. The mortification of censure. Removal from the active duty list. And depending on the extent of his failure, expelled from the Order.

And no one would blink twice.  His friends and fellow apprentices, some knights now as well, would shake their heads and talk about him behind his back.  He would be left adrift, with no home to return to. No purpose left. And he can see the look on his master’s face, hearing of his expulsion.  The sorrow and shame in Qui-Gon’s kind eyes. The image haunts his dreams when he tries to rest. He still remembers how Qui-Gon had looked at him after Melida/Daan.  He never wants to make Qui-Gon look at him like that again.

Obi-Wan can imagine, all too well, the consequences of an error in judgement.  

Whenever he thinks of Hsunni, he finds himself thinking, _What if I had failed?  What if I had not gotten there in time, what if I had been too late?_ It is not only his life that depends on his success.  Other lives, of far greater value that his own, hang in the balance, and with one careless mistake he could be responsible for the deaths of countless others.

He can face explosions and blaster burns, aching muscles and scorched robes, sleepless nights in prison cells on Outer-Rim worlds, the controls of a starship disintegrating under his hands and plunging into freefall.  He can handle forty-seven Rodian insurgents with blasters pressed into the back of his neck, Hutts and shadow agents and hand grenades, but Obi-Wan Kenobi falters at the possibility of failure.


	4. Chapter 4

Qui-Gon has no small measure of renown in the Order for his fighting skills.  Now he works with the senior initiates, those just beginning their training in Ataru.  

On his first day working with this group of seniors, he had introduced himself as their new training master and whispers broke out around the room.  But rather to his surprise, the whispers were not about legendary fighter Qui-Gon Jinn.

“Who’s _that?_ ” one Twi’lek girl had whispered.

“He trained Obi-Wan Kenobi,” one boy answered.  

“ _Oh_ ,” said the others, finally understanding.  

It is humbling work.  His students never want to hear about his own missions, the trials he has faced in his time.  No. Qui-Gon does not impress them.  They only want to hear about his Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who killed a Sith.  It is a strange lesson in humility, to be outdone by one’s own apprentice.

Obi-Wan’s recent heroics have caught the senior initiates’ imagination.  Qui-Gon tells them stories of Obi-Wan, from their years together. How he had mastered the pulsar skate Ataru form in only a few hours.  How he had rescued a class of children from a broken turbolift. How he had won his senior initiate tournament.  His students never seem to grow tired of these stories.  

“Is he as good as you, Master Qui-Gon?” asks one boy, Dak, after the class is over.

“No.  He is better,” Qui-Gon replies with some satisfaction, and means it with all his heart.  He remembers the first time Obi-Wan had bested him in a sparring match. Obi-Wan had been miserable over it.  The boy hadn’t been able to look Qui-Gon in the eye for three days.

“I want to be a great Jedi, like him,” says Dak.  “I want to be perfect.”

“Ah, but perfection is not an attainable goal,” Qui-Gon says lightly.  “As a student, you always hear the masters say, _We are not saints, but seekers._ But perfection is not the goal.”

Dak looks at him, astounded.  This amounts to heresy in the Temple, Qui-Gon knows.  Well, he already has a reputation for being a maverick.  “Then what is?” Dak demands.

“The seeking,” says Qui-Gon.  “Now warm up and start your laps.   _Go._ ”

Qui-Gon has earned a reputation with the seniors as a pitiless drill master.  He runs them slowly through katas and mercilessly whips them through endless sets of drills until every student has sweat dripping from their bodies.  When he releases them from class, they slink out of the training room, exhausted. They complain about Qui-Gon endlessly. He rather enjoys it.

“I’ll bet he never made Obi-Wan Kenobi work this hard,” he overhears Dak, muttering to his companions.

“You’re right,” says Qui-Gon.  He smiles grimly. “I made Obi-Wan Kenobi work harder.  Fifty repetitions of level three. And _go._ ”

A chorus of groans echo through the training room.  At times, his students remind him so much of Obi-Wan, when he was scarcely older than they are now.  But Obi-Wan had rarely complained about drills or repetitions. Qui-Gon had never had to drive Obi-Wan to work at his lightsaber training.  He remembers Obi-Wan practicing katas well into the night to master them, with the determined frown he always seemed to wear while he struggled to perfect a form.    

He remembers how startled he had been to realize that Obi-Wan had stayed up for hours to perfect the hawk-bat swoop.  He had found Obi-Wan still in the training room hours after Qui-Gon had left him there, still practicing the movement.

“Obi-Wan,” he had said, a trifle guilty, “I had not meant you to do this much.”

Obi-Wan had dropped his lightsaber arm.  The boy was weary, yes, with ragged breathing and slumped shoulders.   But there was something else. Qui-Gon could not understand.

“I wanted to get it right,” said Obi-Wan, still breathing hard.  “I wanted it to be perfect.” The boy looked up at him. So uncertain.  Qui-Gon had not meant to make Obi-Wan work so hard.

“You’re exhausted.  Go to bed,” Qui-Gon had told him.  He had meant it kindly. But Obi-Wan’s face had fallen.  Obi-Wan had nodded silently and wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve and left the training room.  He wanted my attention, Qui-Gon had realized as Obi-Wan left. He wanted me to see what he could do. And I didn’t notice.     

“Well done,” he says to Dak, when he finally masters the level three form, and is startled by the look of unselfconscious glee that lights up the boy’s face.  When was the last time Obi-Wan had looked at him like that? Qui-Gon has never been one to give out excessive praise. But Obi-Wan had always known when he had done well.  Or had he? Qui-Gon is no longer quite sure.

One girl, Nin, struggles with the level three form they are learning in their class.  Qui-Gon watches her practice the movements, over and over, and continue to fail. It is not the right form for her, he recognizes.  Nin is quiet and thoughtful, deliberate in her actions. She stumbles with the lightning-fast footwork and acrobatics of Ataru. Still, she is in his class, and he must teach her.  

Nin practices hard.  She works at the form through the entire class, trying to improve.  But at the end of class she looks up at Qui-Gon hopelessly.

“I can’t do it,” she confesses.  She turns off her training lightsaber and lets the hilt hang limply in her hand.  “I’ll never be a good Jedi Knight.”

Qui-Gon lets a moment pass before he speaks.  This is what he struggles with, in teaching. Finding the right words.  The right thing to say. To point out a mistake, but not frame it as a fault.  To encourage even as he corrects. He has long struggled with this with Obi-Wan.  Sometimes he could not help wondering if Xanatos had gotten the best of him, if he had reached the limits of his patience and encouragement with him, and wasted it all on a student who did not want to learn.  If Obi-Wan, and now these students, would suffer needlessly with Qui-Gon as his teacher, too lost in grief and sadness, unable to exert the compassion these young charges require of him.

He looks at Nin’s despairing face as she blinks back tears.  How she reminds him of Obi-Wan. How he would come to Qui-Gon with such unhappiness in his young face, to confess that he had made a mistake, that he had failed in some way.  How he would hang his head and await Qui-Gon’s judgement. But no punishment that Qui-Gon could place on him could be harsher than his own shame. In those moments Qui-Gon had never known what to do, what to say.  He still does not know if he knows the right thing to say. But he will try.

Finally he says to Nin, “What do you suppose makes a Jedi Knight a good one?”  He keeps his voice calm, thoughtful.

Her head comes up.  Ah, his question is not what she had expected.  Good.

“A Jedi Knight is a warrior,” she says uncertainty.

“Hmm,” says Qui-Gon, considering her answer.  “But there are masters and knights who are not warriors.  What about Master Che, in the halls of healing? She does not use a lightsaber.  Is she a good Jedi?”

“Of course,” says Nin.  She wipes away her tears with the sleeve of her tunic.  “She saves lives, every day. Her work is important.”

“Yes, saving lives is important,” Qui-Gon allows.  “What else makes a Jedi good?”

“A good Jedi follows the Code.”

“Ah, but I have broken almost every rule in the Code,” Qui-Gon tells her lightly.  “Would you say that I am a good Jedi?”

“Yes,” says Nin.  She is almost smiling now.  “I would say that.”

“Well, thank you.  So if following the Code does not necessarily make a Jedi a good one, what does?”

Nin considers the question.  “Master Windu says-”

“Don’t tell me what Master Windu thinks,” says Qui-Gon.  “I want to hear what _you_ think.”

She looks away for a long time.  When she looks back at him, chin is lifted and her voice is steady.   “I think a good Jedi Knight is one who devotes their life to serving others.”

Qui-Gon places his hand on her shoulder.  “And there are many ways to serve others. Nin, the definition of a good Jedi is whatever you think a good Jedi ought to be.  You can choose your own path.”

“I can?”

“You can,” he says.  “However.  You still need to pass this class.  So I’ll see you this afternoon for an extended training session.”  

Nin hooks her lightsaber on her belt.  “All right,” she says. She leaves the training room grinning.   

Qui-Gon remains in the training room, tidying the room slowly, folding mats and stacking them against the wall.  Remembering a thousand similar training sessions with Obi-Wan. Those days are over. Focus on the present, he reminds himself.  But he cannot seem to stop struggling with a feeling he cannot quite define.

He finds himself struggling to place a name to the feeling for the rest of the day.  He goes around the Temple, to meals, to meetings, in almost a daze. It is a long time later before he realizes what he’s feeling.  The seniors make him feel almost fiercely homesick. But not for a place. Qui-Gon is homesick for a person. He aches for the days when Obi-Wan was his tagalong shadow, following him through the halls of the Temple to meals and practices and meetings and the archives and back to his quarters.  There had been times back then when he had not quite managed to appreciate the companionship. There were moments when he had longed for solitude, to be on his own. But now he misses the boy who had constantly been at his side. There were so many conversations they had never quite finished. So much between them left incomplete.  So many feelings left unaddressed.

Regret.  That is what he feels.  

He needed more from me than lightsaber training, Qui-Gon admits to himself.  It is a thought he has had almost constantly since Obi-Wan had left as a Knight.  But what, I don’t know.

He thinks back to the lesson he had tried to give Nin.  How many times had Obi-Wan stopped a kata that was just not quite right to look up at Qui-Gon, uncertain and unsure, saying _I’m trying my best._ Qui-Gon had never known what to say.  He had often settled for Yoda’s old maxim, the one every Jedi student has heard a thousand times.   _There is no try._

But Qui-Gon thinks that was not the lesson Obi-Wan had needed, after all.  Perhaps the boy needed to hear something different. What he should have been telling Obi-Wan all along is that _A Jedi is not perfect - nor is a Jedi meant to be._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In his heart of hearts, he had never been able to stop wanting to be the kind of Knight that the others tell stories about. In his wildest imaginings as an apprentice, he had pictured himself setting out as a newly-minted Knight, the one the Council goes to for the most important, the most delicate missions, and returning to the Temple with his virtuous deeds, and having Qui-Gon look at him with affectionate approval. To hear him say, I am glad I trained you, after all. You were worth it, after all.

If he had time to consider it, Obi-Wan would have to admit that Knighthood was not all that it was reputed to be.  

He is used to being with Qui-Gon.  Always cramped quarters, living in each others’ pockets.  The companionship that rose out of everyday familiarity, a relationship that had been built on shared experiences, both small and great.  Planning and coordinating, reviewing missions to review what went wrong - usually quite a lot, and not always Obi-Wan’s fault - and what worked - sometimes very little, and nothing to do with either of them.  Now he is often alone. It’s hard not to feel like something is missing.

But mostly, Knighthood was the same routine Obi-Wan had gotten used to as a Padawan.  First you were on duty, and it was working hard and fast, no food, no sleep, no end in sight, and with things ready to go wrong just as soon as you got things to go right; then you were off duty, and it was reports and bacta patches and heat-pak meals until the cycle began again.  

You never felt caught up on sleep.  You never felt quite like you had had enough to eat.  You always felt vaguely as though you were not quite clean; certainly being a Jedi Knight involves more _grime_ and fewer showers than one can ever truly prepare for.  Once he had sent a long-distance message to Garen on the return trip from the moons of Pillar just to tell him, wide-eyed with distress, “ _Every article of clothing I own is filthy.”_

None of it is much like the trashy holonovels he and Garen used to pass back and forth between them, a series of riveting, entirely unrealistic exploits of Jedi Knights, written by an enthusiastic author who clearly had no idea what sort of services Jedi Knights actually performed.  He can still vividly recall how dashing those fictional Knights had been, how they had always been battling evil geniuses, having rather an unbelievable amount of galactic citizens swooning over them, how there had always been a heroes’ welcome waiting for them when they returned to the Temple; weary, yes, but with glory and honor following in their wake.  As well as, occasionally, one of the swooning citizens.

Obi-Wan had dreamed of being a hero, like the Knights in those holonovels.  He and Garen and Bant had talked of daring adventures, escapes and rescues, chases and battles, all they would do as Knights.  

Foolish dreams, of course.  Glory and honor were not things that a Jedi craved.  And Obi-Wan has certainly defeated evil geniuses, but it had involved rather more paperwork than the holonovels ever depicted.

 _I just want to be a Knight,_ Obi-Wan had reminded himself, long after he ought to have given up on those dreams.   _I don’t even have to be a particularly good one. I will never be one of the great ones, the ones that are legends.  Not the kind of Knight that goes off and goes great and glorious things. I cannot hope for that - but just a Knight.  If I could only be that._  

But in his heart of hearts, he had never been able to stop wanting to be the kind of Knight that the others tell stories about.  In his wildest imaginings as an apprentice, he had pictured himself setting out as a newly-minted Knight, the one the Council goes to for the most important, the most delicate missions, and returning to the Temple with his virtuous deeds, and having Qui-Gon look at him with affectionate approval.  To hear him say, _I am glad I trained you, after all. You were worth it, after all._ To have even Master Windu look at him and admit, _I was wrong, we were all wrong about you, about your commitment._

He had dreamed of coming back from a long mission, with a crowd of Jedi waiting for him, laughing and calling out his name, clasping his shoulder and shaking his hand as he passed.  He had pictured kneeling at Qui-Gon’s feet, and Qui-Gon shaking off his usual reserve to pull him into his arms in welcome.

But dreams never come true quite the way you imagine them.  

No one meets him on the Temple landing pad when he returns from a three-week mission to the Andrades cluster.  Obi-Wan isn’t surprised. It is midday at the Temple. Students are in classes, masters are conducting research, attending meetings.  Since he became a Knight, he has gotten rather used to arriving back at the Temple alone. It is a stark contrast from his apprenticeship, where there had often been someone waiting for them at the landing pad.  Tahl, or Yoda, or another of Qui-Gon’s friends.

He checks in the Temple and submits his mission report, then heads to his quarters in the Knights’ dormitory.  They are sparse, typical of a Knight’s quarters, and tidy, which is typical of Obi-Wan. They are also entirely his own, a dubious perk of his new rank.  His quarters consist of one medium-sized room, with a couch and low table, and a small alcove with a sleepcouch.  He has a window, which is an advantage, and a private refresher. No kitchenette, but there is one in the shared common room on this hall in the Knight’s dormitory.  

Obi-Wan deposits his rucksack, boots, and utility belt on the low table and falls on the sleepcouch.

He has three days of leave before his next mission.  When he wakes up, he finds he has slept through two and a half of them.  

No time to stop for a meal.  There never does seem to be enough time for meals.  He has been living off protein pellets and ration bars for what is beginning to feel like forever.  Obi-Wan is starting to have that empty, weak feeling that you get when you haven’t eaten very much in rather a long time.  Obi-Wan remembers how, as an apprentice, he had once wondered darkly if Qui-Gon lived off a diet of fresh air and determination.  Now fresh air and determination seems to constitute the majority of his diet as well.

There’s just enough time to shower and change out his current sweat-soaked and stained tunics for fresh ones, to put in a requisition order with the quartermaster, to pull up his new mission file on his datapad and quickly review the mandates and arrange transportation.  Varada sector, Delantine. He hopes he hasn’t waited too late to secure transport - oh, good, there’s a ship bound for the Varada sector departing from Centax-2 in two hours. He can catch one of the shuttles to Centax-2, they leave every half-hour. A relief.

He checks his comm, and there’s two messages from Qui-Gon, wanting to know if he has returned to the Temple.  Obi-Wan feels ashamed. He had come so close to failure in his last mission. He cannot quite bear to hear what Qui-Gon would have to say about it, if he mentions what had happened.  He leaves Qui-Gon a message.

“Sorry to miss you again,” he apologizes.  He pauses. He is not sure what to say. Lately he has accepted mission after mission, he doesn’t take more than the required standard three days off duty before jumping into another brushfire.  He settles for, “I hope I’ll see you soon.”

There was a time when Obi-Wan had returned from a mission, breathless with relief and ready to spill out his heart to Qui-Gon.  But as he had talked about the details of his mission, he had caught a glimpse of the expression on Qui-Gon’s face. There was a new, deep line between his brows. Obi-Wan had faltered in his story.

“Is there something wrong?” Obi-Wan asked cautiously.

“You took quite a risk,” Qui-Gon said, frowning.  There was that grave look on his face again. Oh dear.  There must have been something he had done wrong, something Qui-Gon would have corrected him for, had he still been Obi-Wan’s master.

He braced himself to listen to whatever lesson Qui-Gon intended to offer him.  But no lesson came. Qui-Gon had simply shaken his head. But that same grave expression clouds over his face, now, whenever Obi-Wan speaks about his missions.

Often as an apprentice Obi-Wan had thought to himself ruefully that Qui-Gon was very difficult to please.  He can remember all the times he tried to do more than his best - go above and beyond, anything to make Qui-Gon notice him.  He can still vividly remember the feeling of being fourteen, stopping a blaster bolt meant for a senator just before impact, glancing sideways to see if his master had noticed.  He would have done anything to make Qui-Gon smile at him in approval. But Qui-Gon had been silent about the events of that mission, long after its conclusion.

 _It's not enough.  It's never enough.  Why am I not enough?_ Obi-Wan had drawn back from the feeling, appalled.  This was a feeling unworthy of a Jedi. So Obi-Wan buried it as deep in his heart as he could.

Perhaps someday, he tells himself.  Perhaps I’ll do something good enough, and Qui-Gon will see it.  And then it would be all be worth it - never eating, never sleeping, always some alarming, unidentifiable stain somewhere on his clothing - it will all be worth it, then.

 

 

He makes the shuttle for Centax-2 just in time, and he is surprised to see Bant onboard.  She laughs in delight when she sees him.

“What a coincidence,” Obi-Wan says, feeling almost overwhelmed.  

“There is no coincidence,” says Bant, laughing.  “Only the Force. I suppose it noticed how much I’ve missed you.  I never see you at the Temple these days.”

Obi-Wan can only shrug.  He is relieved, in all truth, to stay away from the Temple.  He prefers avoiding the same mortifying question from his friends that has been following him since Naboo: _Have you topped killing a Sith yet?_ Nothing he has done so far feels like enough. Will it ever be enough?  Obi-Wan doesn’t know. “Tell me what you’ve been doing,” he says.

Bant is heading to Riska III, to provide disaster relief training to the miners there.  She tells him stories about bad water, terrible food. “And the worst part is that everyone always assumes that because I’m a Jedi Knight, I can’t get food poisoning!”  

“And I have heard about your missions, Obi-Wan,” says Bant. Her silver eyes are sparkling with happiness.  “You have done so much.”

Obi-Wan shrugs again, embarrassed.  “Only what the Council asks of me.” He tries to change the subject lightly.  “But I want to hear about _you._ Tell me about your relief efforts on Dessiton.”  

But Bant is intractable.  She curls her cool fingers around his hand and asks him why he keeps taking on more missions.  “You work too much,” she says. “You’re almost never at the Temple. You’ve taken mission after mission lately.  You ought to take a break. Visit Qui-Gon. I’m sure he misses you.”

Obi-Wan swallows around the lump in his throat.  “There always seems to be another mess to clean up,” he offers jokingly, but her silver eyes suddenly look sad.  

“You can’t fix an entire galaxy’s worth of messes, Obi-Wan,” Bant says.  “You do not have to push yourself so hard. You have already done so much.”

He looks down at her hand, so carefully wrapped around his own.  “It’s not enough,” he says. “None of it is enough.”

“Not enough?” Bant says.  She sounds surprised. “Obi-Wan, I have heard of all your accomplishments.  You have rescued hostages. You saved so many lives, I have heard all about it, Garen always sends me the HoloNet articles with your name in them. How is that not enough?”

But he cannot answer her question.  He cannot explain. Obi-Wan has heard what the some of the other Jedi say about Qui-Gon.  That he is jaded, aloof, stubborn, reckless. A maverick. That his previous student failed his training.   Obi-Wan cannot fight back those rumors with words. The only thing he can do is to keep from being another failure - though Obi-Wan is certain that if he is a failure, it is all his own doing and none of Qui-Gon’s.  It is up to him, he knows, to be a success, now that Dooku has left the Order, since Xanatos fell so many years ago. He must not let Qui-Gon down in this.

He tries to explain, for Bant’s sake.  “There is so much more I need to do,” he tries to tell her.   “To make it up to Qui-Gon.”

Bant looks at him, wondering.  “Make up for what?”

She is so good.  She always has been.  She has always had the highest grades, the most brilliant mind, chosen as a Padawan at only eleven years old.  She provides first aid and disaster relief training for ecological disasters. She has patented medicines, isolated viruses and bacteria, invented vaccines for epidemics on tiny Outer-Rim worlds.  She has written seemingly endless series of papers published in scientific journals. She has saved countless lives.

Bant would never do anything to hurt another being, and Obi-Wan loves her for that.  But she cannot understand what he feels. Things come so easily to Bant. She cannot understand what it feels like to know that you are not enough.  

Obi-Wan squeezes her hand.  Dear Bant. He hopes she never understands.  “Me,” he says. “Because it’s me.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Self-mastery is the true mark of a Jedi, the masters always say. More important than skill in battle or control of the Force. A Jedi must control his anger, impatience, frustration. His pain, his hunger, his fear. Those were words Qui-Gon had repeated to Obi-Wan, again and again. He remembers the lessons he had tried to teach the boy. To not show pain even when injured. To move past hunger and exhaustion to fulfill one’s duty. Never betraying a weakness. Stoic, despite the circumstances. How well Obi-Wan had learned those lessons.

Obi-Wan is known for his premonitions, generally dire.  Over the years, Qui-Gon has learned to recognize the look on Obi-Wan’s face when he is about to say something that will come true, at an undetermined time, in what is typically an unpleasant way.  Qui-Gon has long since learned not to discount these premonitions, after a routine mission on the moon of Pallax had ended with them both trapped in a collapsed mine for thirty-six hours, waiting to be evacuated.  

“Why didn’t you listen to me?” Obi-Wan had asked afterward, rolling a bacta pad over one of the several deep cuts on Qui-Gon’s arm.  “I did tell you not to go inside.” 

And Qui-Gon, sore, irritable, and heartily embarrassed, had failed to maintain a Jedi-like composure of his emotions.  “Why did you follow me, then?” he snapped in return. 

“Someone had to go in after you,” Obi-Wan had said.  “Besides - I figured it would probably turn out all right.  It always has so far.”

“And what if it hadn’t?” demanded Qui-Gon.

“Ah, well -” Obi-Wan half-turned to take another bacta pad out of the med supply kit.  “Then you’d have been stuck with me for a long time,” he said cheerfully. Obi-Wan becomes more and more cheerful the more people are trying to kill him.  A strange reaction, Qui-Gon has often mused, though likely not much stranger than any of the other coping mechanisms other Jedi use to deal with their daily brushes against death.  

He knows Obi-Wan.  As long as he’s making a joke, he’s fine.  It’s when he gets quiet and passive and that you have to start worrying about him.  There had been a mission once, when Obi-Wan had taken a blaster bolt to his shoulder while protecting a senator from an assassination attempt.  Qui-Gon had thought he had only been grazed by the blast. Afterward he had turned to Obi-Wan and been shocked to see him pale and unmoving on the ground.

Qui-Gon had knelt beside him, peeling back the ragged edges of the tunic.  “Why didn’t you say anything?” he demanded. 

Obi-Wan had blinked slowly at him.  “I did,” Obi-Wan says. “I said I thought I had a bad feeling about this.”  It was Obi-Wan’s quiet passiveness that had alarmed him even more that the red stain spreading through his tunic.  

Qui-Gon had ruthlessly forced his rising panic down.   _ This is not the Jedi way.   _ Hasn’t he always said that to Obi-Wan?  Whenever he was angry, frustrated, impatient.   _ This is not the Jedi way, Obi-Wan.   _ Whenever Obi-Wan is too frantic, lost in the feeling; breathing too fast, losing himself to fear.   It is not the Jedi way, Qui-Gon had reminded himself in that moment, so that his hands would stop trembling, so that he could do what he could for Obi-Wan before the medics arrived.  He had not wanted Obi-Wan to see his worry.

“You could have been killed,” Qui-Gon had said.  “Obi-Wan-”

“I don’t mind dying,” Obi-Wan had said.  “If someone has to. I don’t mind - it might as well be me.”

All Jedi learn to put aside their physical needs for the sake of a goal, to let go of their need for sleep, food, comfort.  To put aside their wants and desires in order to serve the needs of others. But at what cost? Qui-Gon has wondered. To override the body’s need for sleep.  To suppress one’s need for sustenance. He has done it often enough himself, when there just wasn’t enough time, when lives where at stake. But when one’s life is what’s always hanging in the balance of life or death, there runs the risk of losing sight of the importance of that life.

Self-mastery is the true mark of a Jedi, the masters always say.  More important than skill in battle or control of the Force.  _A Jedi must control his anger, impatience, frustration.  His pain, his hunger, his fear._ Those were words Qui-Gon had repeated to Obi-Wan, again and again.  He remembers the lessons he had tried to teach the boy. To not show pain even when injured.  To move past hunger and exhaustion to fulfill one’s duty. Never betraying a weakness. Stoic, despite the circumstances.  How well Obi-Wan had learned those lessons.

He had stayed with Obi-Wan until the medics took over.  “Next time,” Qui-Gon had promised, “next time I will listen to you.”

  
  
  


Obi-Wan calls him on the comm one night, enroute to the Thand sector.  Qui-Gon can tell something is wrong before he even answers the call. Obi-Wan is quiet and terse, the way he gets when something is on his mind.

It’s hard to listen to Obi-Wan speak without seeing his face.  They had relied on looks so much more than words, by the end of Obi-Wan’s apprenticeship.  Qui-Gon had not realized how much he had come to depend on that familiarity, to know when Obi-Wan had caught on to Qui-Gon’s intentions in the middle of a mission, or when he had caught a glimmer of warning from the Force that meant Qui-Gon should stop and turn back.   A hundred little habits. How Obi-Wan’s shoulders slumped when he was tired. How he looks when he is angry - particularly when he is angry at Qui-Gon, though nothing will ever possess Obi-Wan to admit that he is ever angry at Qui-Gon. He knows when Obi-Wan thinks the local cuisine is disgusting but is too polite to say anything about it.  The way he looks when he is about to tell a terrible joke, or dead on his feet after a grueling training session, he knows the way the line between Obi-Wan’s brow smoothes out when he shifts from concentrating fiercely in the heat of a battle to allowing the Force move through him instead. 

“It’s going to be a bad one,” Obi-Wan says, without preamble.  

Qui-Gon snorts gently.  “That seems to be the defining description of all your missions so far.”

Obi-Wan huffs.  How Qui-Gon wishes he could see his face right now.  “I get the feeling it’s all going to blow up in my face.” 

It is the resignation in his voice that catches Qui-Gon’s attention.   “That sounds rather foreboding,” Qui-Gon says, alarmed.    

He can almost hear Obi-Wan’s shrug.  “Well - it’s just like you said. I haven’t had a mission yet where I  _ didn’t _ have a bad feeling about it,” Obi-Wan says.  He pauses. “Shouldn’t you be telling me to stop focusing on my anxieties?”

“You should listen to your instincts,” urges Qui-Gon.  “No unnecessary risks. The Force-”

“I will do whatever the mission requires of me,” Obi-Wan says, interrupting him.  “I know my duty.”

Qui-Gon is at a loss for words.   It is the Jedi way to to do what the Force asks of you.  But Qui-Gon worries that it is not the Force that asking this of Obi-Wan.   “It’s a suicide mission,” he says grimly. 

“I’ll do what I must,” says Obi-Wan.  “No matter what might be coming.  It’s all right,” he says, calm.  Earnest. He is far too calm, in Qui-Gon’s opinion.  “I don’t mind.” There it is again, that note of resignation, that fills Qui-Gon’s heart with dread.   _ For the mission, _ Obi-Wan says.  Qui-Gon cannot count how many times he has said that and then done something reckless.   _ That’s where the mission took me.    _

“No.  It is not all right.  I mind,” said Qui-Gon heavily, “that you don’t seem to mind.”

There is so much that they don’t say to one another, but yet they know, from long experience with each other, what the other needs.  When one needs to stop and rest, when the other needs to be alone.  They know each other so well.   Obi-Wan knows to bring him tea if  he is in a spectacularly bad mood. Qui-Gon knows what to do for him, when he is tired or injured or needs a hand on his shoulder and to be told that it was not his fault that someone died.  But Qui-Gon does not know what to do for this resignation. 

It feels like they are having two different conversations every time they talk.  Qui-Gon says one thing, Obi-Wan hears something else.  _ Why can’t we just say what we mean?  _ Qui-Gon finds himself wondering.  He has always tried to hide his concern from Obi-Wan.  The boy so often takes his worry as a lack of trust. He wants Obi-Wan to feel confident in his skills.   Obi-Wan always thinks in terms of success and failure.  Qui-Gon only means to tell him to be careful, because he could not bear to lose him.  But Obi-Wan hears _ I don’t trust you, I don’t believe in you, I don’t think you can do it.   _

All this fear.  All this love. All tangled up together in Qui-Gon’s heart, where those feelings ought to have been released to the Force long ago.  He has not told Obi-Wan of these things. He is too stubborn, too prideful. Obi-Wan certainly has no idea what Qui-Gon holds inside his heart, that he has all this love and worry wrapped up inside.  The boy does not need to see that, to realize Qui-Gon’s failings. His weakness has always been attachment, he knows.

This is not the Jedi way.   

He can hear Obi-Wan’s breath as static against the comm speaker.  “Qui-Gon?” Obi-Wan asks eventually.

He wants to say something to make Obi-Wan understand.  But he doesn’t know how. So he falls back on what he said so many times before.  “Just be safe,” Qui-Gon replies, and he hears Obi-Wan’s faint sigh even from the Expansion region.  

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan Kenobi has lately developed a reputation for possessing a remarkable degree of patience, even for a Jedi. It has not always been so. He had often found it difficult to sit still as a Padawan, so much so that Qui-Gon had often assigned to him a particular task that he had obliquely referred to as Obi-Wan’s moving meditations. Really it was just Obi-Wan and his restless legs taking a journey up a crumbling stairway in an abandoned Temple spire, flight upon flight of stairs, whenever he was possessed by what Qui-Gon called his youthful exuberance.

Obi-Wan Kenobi has lately developed a reputation for possessing a remarkable degree of patience, even for a Jedi.  It has not always been so. He had often found it difficult to sit still as a Padawan, so much so that Qui-Gon had often assigned to him a particular task that he had obliquely referred to as Obi-Wan’s moving meditations.  Really it was just Obi-Wan and his restless legs taking a journey up a crumbling stairway in an abandoned Temple spire, flight upon flight of stairs, whenever he was possessed by what Qui-Gon called his youthful exuberance.  

“Ah, Padawan,” Qui-Gon would say blithely, when Obi-Wan could not find a way to settle himself down on a piece of furniture in Qui-Gon’s quarters or when even rounds of sparring left him with adrenaline still pounding through his blood, “you look as though you are in need of some moving meditation.”  And Obi-Wan would find himself climbing stairs for the rest of the afternoon.

The supposed purpose of the meditation was to know many stairs there were in the tower.  Rumor had it that the spire was made of over a thousand stairs. Obi-Wan ought to have been able to confirm or deny this speculation by age fourteen, but the truth of the matter was that he had never been able to count the stairs.  It was a more difficult task than one might imagine. He always started off fine, but somewhere around the middle of the tower, he would lose his train of thought and gradually his awareness would silently fade away, and his world would narrow down to just his quick breaths, the sweat dripping down his neck, the cramping in his thighs.  It always came as a sort of surprise to reach the top. You knew it was coming, but still - getting there caught you off guard. 

There was nothing in the top of the tower spire except the open holes in the walls where windows had once been, and the birds that found their way inside to nest in the eaves.  Soft brown gleanning-birds that would follow you around, hoping for crumbs from your pockets, and the noisy little irridie birds, with their glossy black and green feathers, and the small golden lilting birds that sang quiet songs to themselves from their perches on the rafters.  He would stay there for a while, listening to the rustling of feathers, watching the light of the sun moving across the crumbling white Alderaanian mirrstone walls, until he felt quiet all over, and as though he was somehow larger inside than he had been before. And then he would stand up and stretch his aching muscles and begin the descent , the blinding light fading back into darkness with every step.  

The descent was never quite the same as the ascent.  Easier on the legs, but it was hard to come out of that feeling of stretched-out, expansive stillness.  Everything was just a little too loud, too bright. And suddenly you would feel, all at once, how exhausted you were.  Obi-Wan would stumble back to Qui-Gon’s quarters and collapse on the battered old gray couch there and Qui-Gon would look up from his datapad and quirk an eyebrow at him.  

“Did you achieve your objective?” Qui-Gon would inquire, and Obi-Wan would open his eyes from where he was lying on the couch and realize, again, that he had lost count of the stairs.  

“Well, there’s always tomorrow,” Qui-Gon would say serenely, and Obi-Wan would groan - not unconvincingly - and agree.  It was one of their private jokes, to pretend that Obi-Wan did not like climbing the stairs. But there had been more than one time that Obi-Wan, when faced with more unpleasant tasks, had done his best to convince Qui-Gon that his time would be better served by walking the stairs instead.  And when he had been an older apprentice, Qui-Gon had stopped assigning him the stairs altogether. It was no longer necessary. Obi-Wan would simply stop by Qui-Gon’s door and lean inside and call out  _ Stairs _ , as a way of letting him know where he would be for the next several hours.   

For a long time, he had not realized that Qui-Gon used the stairs as well, until after Tahl had died and Qui-Gon had taken to walking the halls of the Temple in his grief, roaming the passageways like a restless ghost in search of a place to haunt.    Once Obi-Wan had found that Qui-Gon’s wanderings had taken him to the spire.  Qui-Gon had been descending the stairs as Obi-Wan had been about to begin the ascent, and he had stopped to ask Qui-Gon what he had been looking for. 

Qui-Gon had paused in his descent.  He was looking back up at the stairs curving gracefully above their heads.  “Illumination,” Qui-Gon had said.

Obi-Wan had placed his hand on one white stone wall and leaned against it for support.  “Did you find it?” 

Qui-Gon had looked back down at Obi-Wan on the steps below him.  “Yes,” said Qui-Gon, and he had given him a crooked smile. Then they passed one another on the stairs, so close that their robes brushed against each other with quiet whispers.

Now, sometimes when Obi-Wan returns from a mission, he will find the tower spire and walk the stairs, before he even stops by his friends’ quarters or visits the dojos and salles.  He often thinks of Qui-Gon while he is walking the stairs, though this meditation has always been a solitary endeavor. His mind drifts while he’s climbing, and he will find himself turning over an esoteric remark of Qui-Gon’s, trying to make sense of it, or he will find himself smiling over the memory of a wry comment from his master that floats back to the surface of his mind, unprovoked.  

It feels strange to finish his descent and not head towards Qui-Gon’s rooms to tell him of the thoughts that had come to him on his climb, or to say that he thought he understood, now, what Qui-Gon had meant when he made that remark the other day-- did Obi-Wan get it right?  

The stairs and Qui-Gon had woven patience into him like a pattern of threads in a fabric, until it is so much a part of himself that he almost cannot remember a time when it has not been there.

“I like it,” Obi-Wan had confessed once to him, not so long before their last mission together.  “Once I’ve gotten to the top. Like there’s nothing sharp left inside of me, nothing to tear me up - just empty.  But like I’m all full inside, too. Is that what you wanted me to find, all these years?” 

“A spiritual catharsis?” Qui-Gon had regarded him with bland innocence.  “Why, no. I thought you just needed the exercise. You always were such a restless boy.”

  
  
  
  


As a Knight, Obi-Wan is capable of sitting still.  He is often required to do so, for very long periods of time.  Strapped into one-man starfighters for multiple-jump hyperspace flights, attending through endless debates, diplomatic functions, political rallies.  He has sat through days upon days of negotiations, with only short breaks for waters and protein bars and a short meditation instead of sleep. 

He can hold his body still, but his mind is as restless as ever.  And instead of walking the stairs with his legs, Obi-Wan closes his eyes and walks them with his mind.  Stair after stair, climbing higher and higher. It has become a sort of mental meditation, a place where he goes when his body is required to be one place, and his spirit longs for another.  

Lately Obi-Wan has been finding himself walking the stairs, even the middle of his diplomatic talks with the factions of Lisson-II as they attempt the process of democracy for the first time in the planet’s history.   This is an important mission, he knows. The various factions on Lisson-II have been at war for centuries.  This will be Lisson-II’s first senate session in the planet’s history, their first elections for head of state.  

His mind ought to be concerned with what the senators’ aides are attempting to communicate to him, he ought to be reading the flimsi pamphlets everyone keeps handing him.  But as he sits at the dark red Chandrilian teekwood table, all he can focus on is the rising sense of tension around him. 

There is something coming, Obi-Wan has felt it for days, building in the air around him like the crackling lightning and fierce winds of a thunderstorm.

He has made quiet investigations on the military factions and guerilla fighters, but found no evidence of any potential plots, he has triple-checked security in the new senate building.  He has spent countless hours monitoring the security cameras, assigning bodyguards as protection for key senators, training the staff for emergency security measures. 

And he knows it will all amount to nothing.  

Something is coming - what,  _ what  _ shape will this premonition take? - and no preparations he can make will halt its advance.

He has already written and filed a report detailing the security measures he has taken, the security holovid footage from the past several months, all the data he has collected.  

This morning he arose in his rooms in the capital city, made a cup of sapir, and recorded a message for Qui-Gon.  

He will go where the mission takes him.  

Now he sits in the marbled antechamber of the senate, and listens with half an ear to the aides and guards as they go over their preparations, and waits for what is to come.  

But instead of attending, he finds himself in the Temple staircase, walking up the first several flights of stairs.  It is quite dark at the bottom of the spire - there is no light but the natural light that comes in through the open windows at the top of the spire, and the cracks and holes in the walls themselves,  that become more and more frequent the higher up one goes. And as he goes up the staircase, he finds himself thinking of something Qui-Gon had said to him one of the last times they spoke to one another.     

Obi-Wan had asked Qui-Gon what he had found that time after Tahl’s death, at the top of the spire.  Qui-Gon had opened his mouth, about to say something, and then he had shaken his head. “A reason,” he said finally.   And Obi-Wan had looked at him and wondered what he meant. 

The voice of the aide calls him back to himself.  “Master Jedi, the session is about to begin.”

Obi-Wan pulls himself out of the memory, shakes his head.  Pulls himself together. “Thank you,” he replies. 

He knows with a terrible certainty that he should not step through that door.  

He closes his eyes.  He can feel the same electric feeling building in the air around him.  Something terrible will happen here, in the next few moments, and he has been hurtling towards this moment since before he even reached this planet.  

But he has a duty to this world, to these people.  He cannot leave this mission unfinished, he cannot refuse to walk through the door.  

He is opening the door when the first bomb goes off.  

The shock of it reverberates through him entirely.   When he comes back to his senses, he finds that he is still standing.  The explosion has left a loud ringing in his ears,; he cannot hear, but he can sense the frightened beings trapped under the fallen roof and crumbling walls, trying to escape.  

He makes the same calculation he has made dozens of times in his life.  He adds up the numbers, weighs his own life against them. There’s really no choice, after all.  

He tosses his robe to the ground and runs inside.

The ceiling is collapsing inside the senate chamber.  Obi-Wan puts his hands on what’s remaining of the walls and steadies the structure with the Force.   He holds the walls up, his arms shaking with the effort of concentration, counting heads as senators and aides escape until the second explosion hits the building and rattles the building to the foundation. 

He cannot see anything but destruction, and he finds himself remembering his mission mandate, to facilitate the first senate session on this world.   _ I have failed _ , he thinks dully.  He knows there will be a reckoning for that, later.  But right now, there are still lives to save.

He knows he cannot continue to hold the building together for long.  His strength is giving out. 

Obi-Wan closes his eyes, and he is walking the stairs.     
  
  
  


 

He is there, in the darkness at the bottom of the Temple stairs, shadows moving on the walls.  He catches a glimpse of light, and follows it. And with every step, the light grows stronger and stronger.  Stepping over broken stones, crumbling plaster caught in your hair, robes whispering with every step. Step after step, until the muscles in your legs cry out in exhaustion, and with every step more and more light falls through the holes in the walls, until you reach the top and the bright Coruscanti sun filters through the cracks in the ceiling of the tower, infusing the room with light, and you are breathless from running up the last few stairs.

He takes a breath of nothing but dust and ashes.   There is the light he remembers, and he steps inside.  

Sometimes he finds himself going here, when the Force is almost out of reach, too difficult to grasp, as nebulous as trying to catch smoke with his bare hands.   He goes to the place he has to reach, in order to find the strength to do what he must.  His center, with the truth that aches so badly that he can never bear to look at it directly.  

Being a Jedi isn’t enough, he admits to himself.   He had told himself, again and again, that it would be enough to be a Knight, to earn Qui-Gon’s respect, if not his love.   _ It doesn’t matter,  _ Obi-Wan has always told himself.   _ Even if Qui-Gon never can bring himself to love me.  It doesn’t matter. It’s all right, I can bear it. Being a Knight will be enough. _

But it was never true.  __ He has always wanted his life to be worth something.  He had told himself it would be enough to be a Knight, to lay down his life in the service of others one day.  But he has never been able to justify his own life to himself. 

The only way he knows how to ascribe value to his life is to offer it up as a sacrifice.  

_ There’s something missing in me,  _ he finds himself realizing,  _ something essential.   I don’t know what it is.  How do I fill this emptiness?  Nothing seems to fill it. I don’t want to die. _ _ I just want this ache in me to go away, this emptiness.  I want to live. I want there to be a point to me beyond what I do. _

And in the spire, he finds the strength he needs to do what he must.

He holds up the walls as long as he can, and a little beyond that.  And all at once, his strength gives out. There are no stairs now, just dust and smoke and ashes, and such a heavy weight upon him.  Perhaps someone might come along and find him, if he can be patient enough.

_ I can wait,  _ he tells himself as the darkness closes in,  _ It’s easy to wait.  I have waited all my life.  Surely I can wait just a little while longer.  _


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Qui-Gon Jinn has earned a reputation as a maverick, for never following the rules, for never heeding the advice of the Council. This is not quite the truth. He is always under the command of a higher authority. He is forever following the will of the Force.

Qui-Gon Jinn has earned a reputation as a maverick, for never following the rules, for never heeding the advice of the Council.  This is not quite the truth. He is always under the command of a higher authority. He is forever following the will of the Force.  

  
  


There is a Jedi saying: _Trust in the Force, and it will never lead you astray._ There are many interpretations of this saying.   Some say it means that Jedi have an impeccable sense of direction.  This has been repeatedly proven untrue. Qui-Gon has always thought that the mistake most Jedi make is assuming they know where they are going, and that if they appeal to the Force, it will lead them there.  

But Qui-Gon has learned to never presume to know where he is headed.  When the Force is his guide, he has discovered that his destination will be a surprise every time, but he will always know which way to go when the time comes.  The Force asks him to follow its will, even when he does not understand.  To give up any semblance of control, to simply trust in its guidance. To have faith that destinations matter very little, when all is said and done, and to simply lean back and enjoy the journey.  

It is a lesson he is forever trying to learn.

He had not intended to begin this journey with Obi-Wan.  But he had found himself with a traveling companion regardless of his intentions, sharing a room with a padawan he had not quite intended to accept, on their last night on Bandomeer.  He had been reminded of that lesson again when Obi-Wan had looked up at him with a question in his eyes.  

The boy had looked at him and said, quietly, “You changed your mind.  About me.” Qui-Gon had heard the question in his words and had known what the boy was asking.  _Why?  Was it something I did, did I do something right?_

Qui-Gon had not known how to answer.  He looked down at his hands, turned them over.  Looking for answers. The silence stretched between them, waiting for his answer.  

“It was the will of the Force,” Qui-Gon told him at last.  It was not quite an evasion. Qui-Gon had heard the will of the Force speaking to him in the mine on Bandomeer, roaring fiercely in his ears, demanding, _This boy.  This moment._  The power of it left him still raw and shaking.  But it was not all the truth, either. Qui-Gon told himself that the boy did not need to know more than that.  

“I don’t understand.”

Qui-Gon felt his mouth quirk into a small smile.  “You will.”

Obi-Wan had nodded, accepting the lesson.  And the stillness of the room told Qui-Gon he was soon asleep.  

But not so for him.  Instead of sleep, Qui-Gon had found himself lying awake on his sleep couch, unsure, uncertain, demanding answers of the Force as though he was still a child.  _Why chose me? What can I offer this child? I do not understand._

And in the silence that followed, he had heard the Force whisper back, like a promise to his stubborn, rebellious heart.  _You will._

  


There are times when the Force takes him to places he did not wish to go.

The will of the Force, and Obi-Wan, seem to constantly be pushing him in directions he is reluctant to travel.  It has been so since their beginning. Having Obi-Wan as a student has challenged him in areas where he has long been complacent.  Pushing him to trust, again and again, when his wary heart shies away. To examine his own weaknesses. It is always a struggle, like new growth on an icus vine, the closed bud of a haffa blossom, reluctant to bloom.  But he will try, for Obi-Wan.  

He has regained a quiet confidence in his ability to teach.  He has the patience to train the boy in endless rounds of katas and drills, to offer a steady hand and a kind voice.  But Qui-Gon has never grown comfortable with certain parts that come with teaching. There are moments when he does not know what to do.  What to say. There are always moments he does not expect, that take him by surprise. Sometimes these moments catch him off guard, the Force offering him no warning.  These moments always leave him feeling unsettled, uncertain, conscious of the Force’s push-pull and his own resistance.  

There was a time soon after Obi-Wan had returned to the Order, when Obi-Wan had allowed his frustration and exhaustion to take hold of him, to made a careless mistake in a training exercise with another student.  Afterwards, he had gone looking for Obi-Wan, and found him hunched over unhappily outside the salles.

Obi-Wan has always felt things so strongly, and Qui-Gon has not always known how to help him.  “Obi-Wan,” he said gently.  

“I failed.”

“No, you didn’t.”

Obi-Wan hadn’t looked up. “It’s still there,” he said quietly.  “What you didn’t like about me, when you first saw me. You looked at me and saw something you didn’t like.  And it’s still there. What if it never goes away?”

Qui-Gon’s hands had hung helplessly at his side.  “That’s not true, Obi-Wan,” he said hesitantly.

Obi-Wan looked up at him then, and he had pretended not to see the tear tracks on the boy’s face. “Then why didn’t you want me?  There must have been some great failing in me, that made you not want me.”

He had not known what to do.  He had not known what to say. Qui-Gon knows how to provide first aid for fractured ankles, bloody noses, dislocated shoulders, concussions; he knows how to correct a stance and how remind a student of the dangers of leaving an opening in one’s guard.  But not this.  

 _Why me?_ he asked the Force again.  _What am I to do?  What am I to say? I was not meant for this.  Surely this cannot be your will._

“It was no failure of yours,” he had said finally.  He sighed. “Let’s go.”

Later that night, he had heard the boy crying, locked inside his room.  He had not known what to do. He stood at the door for a while, wondering, _How do you help a boy who does not ask for help?_ And how, he demanded of the Force, could he help Obi-Wan when he cannot control his own emotions, when he could not banish his own insecurities and doubt?

The Force might have whispered an answer, but he could not understand.  

He turned around and gone back to his quarters.  He told himself he was respecting the boy’s dignity.  But neither his own heart nor the Force believed those words.

 _What should I do for him?_ Qui-Gon wondered, and as always, _What does the Force want from me?_ The uncertainty made him restless.  He had walked the gardens and conservatories of the Temple restlessly, touching flowers and branches, demanding answers from the Force, until Yoda had found him there.  

Yoda had regarded him gravely.  “A question, you have.”

“Yes,” he had admitted.  “But when I look to the Force, there is no answer.”

“Perhaps listening, you are not.”  Yoda settled down on a rock beside him.  “But listening, I am.”

Qui-Gon had sighed, spread his hands out in acknowledgement of his struggle.  “Obi-Wan. He feels so much,” said Qui-Gon helplessly. “How do I help a boy who feels so strongly?  How can I teach him to let go of these feelings, when I struggle to let go of my own? I do not know if I can accept him back.”  He studied his hands. “It is my weakness, I know.”

“Think it is a weakness, you do?”

“My own master has always told me so,” Qui-Gon had said wryly.  “It is difficult to know what to do for him. How to help him, guide him.  What does he need from me? I don’t know what to say, what to do. Why did the Force call me to this?”  He had hesitated. “Perhaps there is someone else better suited to help him.”

Yoda harrumped in dissention.  “You, it must be.” He stood up, leaning against his gimer stick.  “A lesson in attachment, this is. Surrender. Do as the Force wills.”

Qui-Gon had been quite suddenly extremely tired of hearing that it must be him, from Obi-Wan, from Yoda, from the Force itself.  He had demanded, rather petulantly, “ _Why?_   Why me?”

Yoda had looked at him placidly.  “Keep listening, you must. Perhaps tell you, the Force will.”  And he had stumped off, leaving Qui-Gon waiting for answers among the haffa blossoms and trailing icus vines.  

Qui-Gon had remained there, listening, gently stroking the haffla blossoms.  The petals under his fingertips had whispered that it is not so easy to uproot a seed that has already been planted.  So with a sigh, he had stood up, and gone to find Obi-Wan.    


 

Sometimes the Force tells him to take a new padawan, to postpone writing his Council report for a frivolously decadent second cup of tea, to take a different route into the marketplace three blocks from the Temple.  Sometimes the Force tells him to save an extra roll from his midday meal. The living Force is always whispering in his ear, occasionally pointing him down a path he had not thought to follow, perhaps sighing at his frequent obtuseness, perhaps laughing as though there is a private joke joke between them, with a sound like leaves shivering on trees.  The Force has a sense of humor. The Force has moods of its own, currents that tug at him, urging him to follow, and he always does, occasionally to Obi-Wan’s dismay.  

Qui-Gon follows the whims of the Force, even though they do not always appear to make sense.  He has been known to stop suddenly in the middle of a busy street and tilt his head to the side, invoking Obi-Wan’s scrutiny.

“What are you doing?”

Qui-Gon closed his eyes, let the Force flow through him.   “Listening.”

Obi-Wan studied him intently. “For what?”

“The Force.”

“And?”

There is always a reason for the Force’s will.  Qui-Gon smiled. “It is telling me that you are hungry,” he said, and tossed Obi-Wan the extra roll from his meal, and Obi-Wan had laughed in surprise.

Or like that time on a moon of Aprogado, with their mission completed, heading towards the nearest spaceport to meet the planetside shuttle, when they had stopped at a fork in the road.  The dancing light under the shade of the pale blue zuratrees had seemed to say that he ought to take the footpath to the left rather than the smooth, paved road to the right. Qui-Gon had listened to the Force and chosen the path less traveled.   

Several klicks later, it had become apparent that the Force was not guiding them down the most direct route to their transport.  “Why did we turn down this road, Master?” Obi-Wan had asked.

“The Force revels its answers in time,” Qui-Gon had replied, rather stymied himself.  The Force rarely provides clear directions. “A true Jedi is never lost. We are exactly where we ought to be.”

Obi-Wan had wiped his face with a corner of his sleeve.  “You did not look at the map,” said Obi-Wan. It was not quite an accusation.  

“We don’t need a map,” Qui-Gon had said serenely.  “We have the Force.”  And indeed, the footpath had ended at the very port where their transport awaited.  They arrived just in time to see the shuttle take off without them.  

The next transport was not scheduled to take off until four hours later.  “It is the will of the Force,” Qui-Gon said philosophically.  

Obi-Wan had looked as though he felt that point was debatable.  “What do we do?” 

Qui-Gon smiled.  “We wait.”

And so they had settled down to wait, just outside the spaceport, where there was a bit of wilderness that had been allowed to grow untamed, with tall golden grasses that rustled quietly in the breeze.  Qui-Gon had sat down to face the line of the sky as the sun began to go down, and Obi-Wan had settled down quietly just by his shoulder.  

“Here,” Obi-Wan said, and pulled out a piece of muja fruit out of the pouch on his belt, and offered half to Qui-Gon.  

“Thank you,” said Qui-Gon.  He had felt absurdly touched by the gesture.   “How did you know?”

Obi-Wan grinned back at him.  “The Force told me we might miss dinner.”

He sat there for hours, mindlessly running his fingers through the tall golden grass and watching the last light of day fade into twilight, with Obi-Wan close by his side.   Thinking, _I could have missed this, he thought.  I almost missed this. I almost missed getting to see this boy grow up._   He had almost missed Obi-Wan, and all the light and companionship and joy he had brought to Qui-Gon’s solitary existence.  His quiet companionship.  

 _He has become a part of me,_ Qui-Gon thought, _part of who I am._ _I cannot imagine a world without him in it.  How did I become so fortunate? He is the best part of me.  And I almost missed it._

Qui-Gon would never have chosen this path, if he had been allowed to decide by himself.  He would have told himself that the difficulties were too great, that it would not have been worth it, that it was simply too hard.  And so often that was true. But sometimes there was a sunset, and there was always Obi-Wan.

Sometimes the Force pulls him in directions he does not mean to go.  And sometimes the Force takes him to a moment where he is right where he needs to be.  Qui-Gon had realized, This is one such moment, this one, right now. And he breathed out a silent breath of thanks.   

  


There are times when the Force offers him no guidance at all. When he calls out to the Force, and receives only a vast silence in return.  There are times when the Force whispers so quietly that Qui-Gon cannot tell its will from the wishes of his own stubborn heart.  

There was one such time, when he had gone with Obi-Wan, after taking a blaster bolt meant for another, to a small hospital on a small Mid-Rim planet.  He had sat through the night in a chair by his bed, watching Obi-Wan in his uneasy, drug-induced sleep.

 _He could have died.  He could have died, and I would have allowed it to happen.  How could I live with that?_ _What do I say to him?  What does he need to hear?_ he had asked the Force, dismayed. 

The Force made no reply. 

There is a Jedi saying that the will of the Force is revealed in silence.   Silence, it is said, will reveal the heart of the listener, when a thousand words cannot begin to describe it.  There is an ancient bound leather book of poetry by a Mirialan mystic in Qui-Gon’s own personal collection, one that he has read so many times that the volume is creased and fraying.  He can open the book and the pages fall apart easily to the right page, and he can read the words there: _Close the door of words, so that the window of your heart may open. To see what cannot be seen, turn your eyes inward and listen, in silence._

Sometimes the Force offers him nothing except silence.  And then Qui-Gon will pause, and give his entire attention to the situation at hand.  And he will listen, because the Force wills it to be so, even though he does not always understand what he hears.

He settled his legs underneath the chair and curled his fingers into his palms and quieted his mind until he could hear nothing but his own heartbeat.  

 _Listen,_ the Force might have been saying, so Qui-Gon listened to the boy’s slow and even breaths, watched the rise and fall of his chest.  He had not known how long he sat there, listening to Obi-Wan’s quiet breathing, remembering the long-ago sound of wind whistling through long grass.   Perhaps the Force was telling him, _Say something._ Perhaps suggesting that he reach out and take Obi-Wan’s hand, to offer a small measure of comfort.  But was it truly the will of the Force, of his own heart making these demands? He could not be sure.

Qui-Gon had wanted to reach out for him.  But it could not be the Force that asked it of him.  It was only his own foolish heart that wished for such things. So he placed his hands in his lap and waited until morning came.

There are truths in the silence that he is not always ready to hear.  Qui-Gon had not wanted to listen.  

_If he had perished, I could not withstand the loss._

It had frightened him, the depth of this feeling.  He thought the Force might have a lesson for him in this moment, but he had not known if he could bear to learn it.  _Is this a lesson in attachment for me? Because I am failing again.  This is a lesson I cannot seem to learn._

But the Force had no guidance to offer him.  There is only his heart, whispering an answer that he could not bear to hear.  

  


There are times when Qui-Gon finds himself fighting against the will of the Force.  When the Force asks too much of him, sacrifices Qui-Gon cannot bring himself to make.  

This is one.  

He is drinking his second cup of tea of the morning when he receives a message.

He turns on the holoprojector and looks at the faint blue image of Obi-Wan, at the hair that now falls in his eyes, the lines of worry on his face smoothed out and nondescript.  Obi-Wan is the very model of a composed Jedi. But Qui-Gon has known him for years, and sees the tiredness in his shoulders, the unhappiness in his face.  

_If you get this message, then I have failed, and  - I am sorry._

He is filled with a sudden, nameless dread.  He closes his eyes and reaches out with the Force, desperate to find out what is happening, and he can feel Obi-Wan’s acceptance and resignation.  

 _No,_ Qui-Gon calls frantically, _Padawan, whatever it is you are doing, stop it now.  There is always another way-_

His universe narrows until there is nothing but the tea cup in his hand, and the fading sense of Obi-Wan.

  


The Council does not protest when he strides into the chamber unannounced, his heart hammering in his chest.  

“Obi-Wan.  What has happened to Obi-Wan?” he asks.  He does not even attempt to hide his fear from the Council.  They must know already, by the way his hands are trembling. He tucks them into the sleeves of his robe and clasps them together tightly.   

Mace Windu has a reputation for severity, his rigid adherence to the Code.  But right now, Mace is looking at him with a frightening sympathy that Qui-Gon almost cannot bear.  

“The senate on Lisson-II was destroyed.  Obi-Wan maintained the integrity of the structure until the rescuers could retrieve the victims.”  Mace touches a holoprojector and allows the security cam holovid footage to play silently.  

Qui-Gon watches the holovid until the second explosion, and then he can take no more.  He closes his eyes against the image, but he can still see, imprinted on the backs of his eyelids, the way the building had gone down in one long, almost graceful collapse.  And Obi-Wan had been inside that building. He listens to the silence of the masters in the room and in that moment he is terribly certain of what the Council is not saying about Obi-Wan.  

Qui-Gon cannot bring himself to ask.  But he must. “And Obi-Wan?”

Mace deliberates, with his fingers steepled over his chest.  “It is at times the nature of the Force to require sacrifice.  Obi-Wan knows that. He did what any Jedi would have done.”

Qui-Gon feels a flash of anger that surprises him.  “I cannot accept that,” snapped Qui-Gon. “It was  _you_  who required it.  Obi-Wan would never say no to whatever you ask of him.  Surely you know that. You should not have taken advantage of his generous nature.”

Mace only looks at him.  His silence tells Qui-Gon, far more than any words can say, that he is allowing Qui-Gon to say such things out of understanding.  Out of pity. “If the Force asked the same of you, Qui-Gon, could you submit to its will?”

He looks away from Mace’s steady gaze. “I am prepared to lay down my life, if that is what the Force requires.  As any Jedi would."

"And Obi-Wan's life?"

Obi-Wan.  Always earnest.  Always loyal. Always prepared to offer himself up as a sacrifice.  And so very dear.  

 _You gave him to me,_ he accuses the Force, _you gave him to me to train and care for, and you put such depth of feeling for him in my heart.  It must have been your will. And now you ask me to give him up. I cannot do it. How can you ask this of me?_

He closes his eyes.

“Obi-Wan was recovered from the debris,” Mace says.  “His prognosis is uncertain. But he still lives.”

He has not wanted the Council to know of his weakness.  But he is certain that the masters can hear the truth of it now, in this moment.   Surely now they know that his entire heart and soul are bound up in that boy. They must see it, in his shaking hands and blurred vision.  He lowers his head and feels dampness on his cheeks.  He waits for the censure that will surely come.

But Mace’s voice is unaccountably gentle.  “You are afraid.”

“Yes,” says Qui-Gon hoarsely.  “I am afraid for his life.”

But Mace shakes his head.  “No. You are afraid of the strength of your emotions.”

Qui-Gon can only bow his head and accept this judgement.  It is, after all, the truth. His own master had said such things many times.  That Qui-Gon was too ready to open his heart. That he was far too prone to affection.  “It is my weakness, I know,” Qui-Gon says stiffly.

But Mace surprises him again.  “No, Qui-Gon. It is your strength,” he says, and Qui-Gon slowly raises his head.  

“You are known,” says Mace slowly, “for your connection to the living Force.  You allow the Force to take you where most among us would never dare to go. But there are places where even you have not ventured.  Perhaps the Force requires more from you than you have been willing to give."  He pauses.  "You are a stubborn man, Qui-Gon.  But even you cannot fight the Force’s will forever."

He finds himself folding to his knees on the cold marble floor.  

He has known for years that Obi-Wan has the potential to succeed, to become a great Jedi knight.  He has always told himself that to see Obi-Wan knighted is the greatest wish of his heart. But there has always been a condition attached to this desire.  He has spent the past twelve years worrying that Obi-Wan might fail, might fall like Xanatos.  Yes, he has wanted Obi-Wan to become a Knight, for then, he will no longer be a master who failed his apprentice. Perhaps he has pushed Obi-Wan too much over the years, and all because of his hidden need to succeed where he had failed before.  And rather than surrendering to the journey, he had only been thinking of where he wished to go.  

And now he is here.  Qui-Gon has succeeded where he failed before.  He has known he would have to give Obi-Wan up one day.  To knighthood. To the Force. That moment came and passed.  He ought to be at peace.

But he is not.

From the moment he took Obi-Wan on as a Padawan, Qui-Gon has wanted him to become a Jedi. It has been his mission for the past twelve years.  And now was all over, and he had missed it. 

He had not been ready to let Obi-Wan go.  There was so much left unsaid between them.  So many lessons left incomplete.  He had trained Obi-Wan until he was as sharp and gleaming as a newly-honed sword, and then sent him out in to the galaxy to uphold the Force's will.  But he had forgotten to make sure he was resilient enough to handle the impact.

 _We weren’t finished with each other,_ he admits to himself, and to the Force.   _You call me back to him, time and time again. What does he still need from me?_

He listens.  And like a promise long past due, the Force whispers its answer, and in that moment, he finally understands.  

"A Jedi is never lost," Mace says.  "You are right where you need to be."  He is almost smiling.  "Now.  Go to your boy." 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Qui-Gon Jinn has never found it easy to let go. “Too stubborn to die, you old fool,” he had overheard Mace Windu say, perhaps a bit rueful - perhaps more like exasperated - leaning over Qui-Gon as he had clung to life after Naboo, the lungs in his repaired chest working without his own will, the tube in his throat breathing for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shameless, absolutely shameless sentimental drivel. Enjoy!

Qui-Gon Jinn has never found it easy to let go.  “Too stubborn to die, you old fool,” he had overheard Mace Windu say, perhaps a bit rueful - perhaps more like exasperated - leaning over Qui-Gon as he had clung to life after Naboo, the lungs in his repaired chest working without his own will, the tube in his throat breathing for him.  

Had he been able to speak, he would have agreed.  He has heard a seemingly endless litany of those words before.  He is, in fact, too stubborn. He clings to things the way icus vines climb up the silverbark trees in the gardens of the Temple: He hangs on far too long to the ones he holds dear and to old hurts and wounds both; he clings to the perceived value of his own spontaneous whims and his own terrible ideas long after they have proven futile.  He has refused for the past fourteen years to relinquish the battered old couch in his quarters, despite, as Obi-Wan regularly notes, its sagging cushions and unidentifiable stains. And he has clawed his way back to life time after time, regaining consciousness in an endless round of unfamiliar hospitals and medcenters, unable to give up on life.  

Naboo had been no different.  He had held on stubbornly, through the bacta and the surgeries, fighting his way back to consciousness each time he went under, heedless of why, only knowing that there was something he must discover.  And then one day - or evening, perhaps; so difficult to tell - he had woken to hear Obi-Wan’s voice, and Qui-Gon had felt a sudden exhausting relief. He had been so afraid, every time he had woken up before then, that someone would come tell him that Obi-Wan had perished in the fight against the Sith.  

“Obi-Wan,” he said hoarsely.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” Obi-Wan had said.  “I could have helped you. We could have taken him together.”  He had heard the crack in Obi-Wan’s voice.  

“I did what the Force asked of me,” he rasped.  But that was not quite true. It had been his own stubborn heart that had sent him rushing ahead, filled with dread and terror at the thought of Obi-Wan facing the Sith and being cut down.    

He had to fight to regain his strength after his injuries on Naboo.  He began by walking. He shuffled barefoot through the halls of the Temple, first clinging to the pole that fed him intravenous fluids and the additional oxygen his lungs required on the floors of the healers’ ward, then to slow meanderings up and down the corridors of the Temple with a cane for support. Qui-Gon had walked through the halls of the Temple at night, when the lights are dimmed low and glow with a faint blue light.  He had chosen to walk at the time when most of the beings in the Temple are asleep, so that few might come across him hobbling slowly down the halls, winded and leaning heavily on his cane, feeling out of place in the only home he has ever known.  

It was all the same, the same rooms and alcoves, the same archives, the same cushions and low tables in nooks tucked into the common areas where students and masters collected quietly to meditate, the same Temple he had known intimately his entire life, and yet it was not the same.  Or perhaps he was not the same. His wanderings took him all over the Temple, and every room he stepped through seemed to stir up old memories, like dust being shaken off an old rug. The training rooms where he had spent so many hours watching Obi-Wan work through katas and drills, the same path their feet always seemed to take in the Room of a Thousand Fountains when there was something important they needed to talk over.  And then in his wanderings, Qui-Gon had found himself at the bells. 

There is a corridor that leads through an arch to a small tower, and hanging from the ceiling of the tower are the Temple bells.  At the very top of the tower, there are the massive, ancient bells, taller than Qui-Gon, older than Yoda. These bells are seldom rung, and most of the time they remain cracked and silent; but many years ago, someone had begun to hang rows and rows of little bells on strings underneath the arch.  

The bells have been there as long as Qui-Gon can remember, strung up by red and gold and silver strings.  More bells are hung with every passing year. Knights bring them back from their missions; small, round silver bells from Chandrila that sing high notes when the wind blows past, the heavy bells made from hammered bronze from Alderaan that sound their mellow notes, bells with inscribed stars and vines from pilgrimages to Jedha.  And masters and students visit the arch to ring the bells, to signify release.

Jedi go to the bells when they are ready to let go.  Masters go to the arch to ring the bells as the passing of a stubborn emotion, or to release their possession of some knowledge they had once thought they possessed.  Students find moments between their classes and meditations and saber classes to run to the arch and ring the bells, letting go, perhaps, of a fight with a friend, or the lingering shame of an unfortunate grade.  And a new knight will visit the arch and set the bells to ringing after their trials, to mark their passage into a new way of being.

Qui-Gon had gone to the archway not so very long after he had been able to walk on his own strength again, walking through the corridor in his loose-fitting tunics provided by the healers, without even his boots, still leaning heavily on his cane.  He had stood there at the tower, looking up at the bells hanging down like drops of rain frozen in the sky. There were so many things to let go of.  

He touched the small round silver bells first, the ones that hang low to the ground and that the smallest Jedi children can never resist reaching up to touch.  His pride in his own strength - he had not even known had been proud of his own strength until the ability to wield a lightsaber had been abruptly taken from him by a Sith lord, his weeks of recovery and therapy leaving him gasping for breath and exhausted from simply walking the hallways of the Temple.  He shook his head ruefully. He rang the silver bells and they chimed wildly, the way the children always love.  

His certainty that he was in the right, that his choices on Tatooine and Naboo and here at the Temple over the course of that last final mission were correct, that it was the Force’s will that he was acting on alone.  Qui-Gon sighed and touched the string of Jedhan bells, so old that the stars and vines that danced along their rims had been smoothed out by countless touches, and heard their mellow notes ringing in the air. And Obi-Wan, who had left that morning on his first mission as a knight.   

Qui-Gon’s fingers hesitated on a warm bronze bell.  He had thought himself ready for this. Their path was only meant to be traveled together for a short time.  This was how it was always supposed to end. Knighthood, and then a parting of ways.  

Release.  

But he could still see Obi-Wan as he had been when they first met.  As a child, looking up at him with desperate hope.  The shuttered look of defeat when Qui-Gon had told him no.  The frozen way his half-hearted smile had caught on his face when Qui-Gon had silently met him again on Melida/Daan.  His face as Qui-Gon had last seen it, only the day before, earnest and eager, saying goodbye as he left on his first mission as a knight, saying _I won’t let you down._   

He took his hand away.

He stood on the balcony for some time after that, listening to the sound of bells chiming in the fierce wind that always whipped between buildings on Coruscant, feeling the wind tearing his hair away from his face and stinging his eyes.

 

 

 

Pride is often what sends a Jedi to the bells.  A Jedi caught up his own success, until a chance misstep sends them to the bell tower, to release their pride in their own accomplishments.  An initiate too pleased with their own growing skill in using the Force might be sent on a pilgrimage to the bells, with the gentle hint that meditation on what they might have to surrender would not be amiss.  

Qui-Gon had spent years after Xanatos left on his own restless, shameful pilgrimage across the galaxy, wandering from planet to planet, unable to let go.  He could tally up his sins, and did so: Pride, certainly, he had always been far too proud of Xanatos, of his innate strength in the Force. He had spent years looking at Xanatos and only seeing himself reflected back at him.  His skill in teaching, having trained such a powerful student. His own skills in combat, honed to precision in Xanatos. Selfishness. Attachment, just as his master had predicted.  

Qui-Gon could identify these things, but every time he was recalled back to the Temple, like a tethered animal reaching the end of its rope, he would leave the training rooms with all the hopeful students, with Yoda’s watchful gaze on his back, and soon enough he would find himself back at the bell tower, frozen in place, utterly unable to release them. 

He would stand still, watching a small cluster of students laughing as they ran down the corridor and jump as high as they could to touch the highest of the bells strung up in the archway.  The uncomplicated joy in their surrender.  

He had not been able to do the same.  _I do not deserve it_ , he had thought, hearing the laughter of the students.  He could not find another way to put it into words, not to Yoda, no matter how many times the old master invited him to tea. He could only think, _I cannot let go of these things, I cannot forget them.  I should remember. I cannot make the same mistakes again._

And he would turn, with his robes sweeping across the floor, and return to the hangar, to whatever freighter or transport he had booked passage on, and continue his wandering.  

 

 

 

The oldest Temple bells are only rung when a Jedi dies.  

The bells are rung for every Jedi who passes into the Force.  Friends go to the arch to ring the ancient bells, while the funeral pyre burns, and the notes of the bells resonate through the Temple.  Qui-Gon has heard the Temple bells ring for countless friends, masters fallen in battle, elder Jedi who quietly passed into the Force, as peaceful as falling asleep, for students who were struck down too early, offering their lives for the good of the galaxy.  

He had rung the bells for Tahl, when she had passed.  He had felt the vibration of the enormous, ancient bells resonate through his chest, he had felt grief welling up tight in his throat, but he had not felt the release of her passing.  Not for many days. Only after many months passed by, he had been able to remember Tahl with light still in her eyes, and feel joy in the memory instead of an ache.  

Qui-Gon had walked the floors of the Temple, night after night, a thousand steps over the smooth marble floors.  His feet grew sore, and still his chest ached with all the things he could not give up. The sound of her laughter, the feeling of her fingers curling around his in comfort.  The Force waited patiently, waiting for him to give them back. But he had clung to each memory stubbornly. He could not give up those things. They were all he had left.  

He had walked the corridors each night in grief and sorrow, and he would find himself back at his quarters at daylight, with a tray of hot sapir tea on his table, left there by Obi-Wan. It had made him feel ashamed.  _I should be taking care of him,_ he had thought. Instead it had been the other way around. He had tried to gently put an end to the pots of tea, but he had never been sure if his words had come across to Obi-Wan as he intended.  

"Obi-Wan, I don't need tea," he had tried to say gently.  "You do not have to do this anymore."

Obi-Wan had looked at him uncertainly.  "I want to help."

"You have other duties to attend," Qui-Gon had said carefully.  But he could see that Obi-Wan did not understand. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he had shut a door in the boy's face.  He had only meant to relieve Obi-Wan of an unnecessary task.  He had watched Obi-Wan nod silently and place his tea pot back on the tray and disappeared with it out of Qui-Gon's rooms.  That had been the end of the tea.

He had gone looking for the boy, later, hoping to apologize.  Obi-Wan was grieving in his own way, Qui-Gon knew.  

He had found himself walking down the steps of the tower where Obi-Wan often sought refuge,  carrying all his grief with him, to the top of the spire, calling out to the Force, or perhaps to Tahl herself, _How do I go on? What do I live for now?_ And he had listened in vain for an answer.  

Sometimes the Force sounds like Tahl’s voice in his ear.  She always had a reputation for never once being able to mind her own business.  _Qui-Gon, you haven’t changed,_ he could almost hear her say, _You are always so stubborn.  Just let go._

 _I cannot go on,_ he admitted to her.  _What do I have left to live for?_ he asked, and for a moment, he could almost hear her laughter.  

 _You didn’t come here to find me,_ she seemed to say.  _What were you looking for?_

He had no answer for her.

He sat at the top of the spire for a long time.  Perhaps, he found himself thinking, he could not help but feel that if he were to give up his love for Tahl, he would also give up the part of him that is capable of loving.  

And when the familiar peace of Tahl’s presence had faded, he had made his way down the stairs, feeling as though he had aged years in such a small handful of moments.  Then, in his descent, he had seen Obi-Wan coming up the stairs.   

“What were you looking for?” Obi-Wan had asked.  Qui-Gon had seen the light falling in his face, and feeling the empty ache inside his chest suddenly fill up.  He thinks suddenly of all the pots of tea, and how Obi-Wan has turned his own grief and sadness for Tahl into compassion.  Obi-Wan’s own love for Tahl was not gone. It was simply changed, transmuted into something greater. Obi-Wan has channeled his own love for Tahl into taking care of what she held dear.  Of Qui-Gon.

How much the boy has taught him about compassion.  About letting go.  

 _I have been looking for you,_ he thought.  

He had waited at the foot of the spire until Obi-Wan returned.  Thinking about how much compassion Obi-Wan had offered him, and how little he deserved it.  And how much he had come to depend on it.  Then he said, around the tightness in his throat. “Obi-Wan. I need your help.”

That evening, Obi-Wan had walked to the bell tower with him.  He had stood at his side while Qui-Gon reached up and set all the bells to chiming.  

 

 

 

Now Qui-Gon walks the hallways of an unfamiliar medcenter on an unfamiliar planet.  He walks a circle, his own personal meditation, one that begins and ends at Obi-Wan’s room. 

One step, then another.  One foot in front of the other. 

Strange, he thinks, that such places are all so similar.  No matter which planet you visit, Expansion Region or Deep Core, there will be hospitals with hallways, with soothing colors illuminating from the wall panels, where relatives wait for news of their loved ones, where healers and medics offer small smiles of sympathy when he passes them by.  He should know. He has woken up in so many of them.

He paces another lap around the corridor.  The medcenter is overflowing with patients, victims of the bombing that had destroyed this planet's senate.  That had almost taken Obi-Wan's life.  That still might.  The doctors shake their heads uncertainly at Qui-Gon, when he asks questions like all the other grieving relatives in the halls.

Qui-Gon is known for being a stubborn man.  But one way or another, he will surrender Obi-Wan tonight.  

There are meditations for letting go.  You thank the emotion for what it has taught you.  Perhaps your feelings have taught you that you are grieved, or that you are despairing, or perhaps even that you are hungry, and then you pour out these emotions, like a cup of water spilling on the ground.  Picture the cup breaking. Picture your fingers spreading out, dust blowing away in the wind. Picture a pool with still waters. Drop a stone, watch the ripples of the water as it sinks.  

_There is no passion, only peace._

But Qui-Gon does not feel peaceful.

One step, then another.

Instead of peace, his mind keeps showing him Obi-Wan’s face.  Obi-Wan as he looks right now, a battered figure in a hospital bed, his face swollen and bruised.  Obi-Wan as he has looked the last few years of his apprenticeship, looking at Qui-Gon with easy affection.  The look on the boy’s face when he had said _It’s still there.  What you didn’t like about me._ The more Qui-Gon tries to let it go, the most that last image keeps showing up. 

If Qui-Gon looks inside his heart, he knows that it had not been the boy’s anger that had caused him to turn Obi-Wan away at the beginning.  There had been anger there, yes, but how many times had Qui-Gon heard that anger is simply a place where fear has taken root? When he looks deeper, past the anger that Qui-Gon had drawn back from, there is something else.  Despair. Shame for all his perceived flaws, for thinking himself mediocre among the other initiates, shame for being so old and still unchosen, for being unwanted by a master. Despair and shame had hung so thick around him that the other students sensed it, and made him a target, and the masters had sensed it, and pulled back in alarm and regret, and left a boy with no one to turn to and a yawning sense of loneliness.  

And that despair and loneliness and shame could have led to the dark side.  To hopelessness. To desperation. And that, truly, was what Yoda feared for Obi-Wan, and what had caused Qui-Gon to almost cast him aside.  The boy’s strong emotions had made him uncomfortable.  They reminded him too much of himself.  

Qui-Gon's own despair.  His own loneliness.  

But Obi-Wan had somehow let it go.  To find a way to have hope despite losing everything he had ever known.  He had let go of his dream of being a knight. That his life would still matter, if he can still help people somehow.  That he might someday become worthy. And what a Jedi thing to do, Qui-Gon had marveled, when he had finally understood.  What a Jedi path to take. And Obi-Wan has never stepped off that path, Qui-Gon realizes. Hope, growing from a despair so quiet that Qui-Gon had never understood it for what it was.  

Obi-Wan had offered his life as a forfeit on Bandomeer, and Qui-Gon had seen the compassion in him.  All the love and strength Obi-Wan was capable of. It had humbled him. And yet Obi-Wan had gotten the wrong idea from that.  He had thought Qui-Gon’s acceptance was something he had earned.

Qui-Gon keeps making the same mistake, all over again.  He has been looking at Obi-Wan and seeing only his own reflection in him.  The skills Qui-Gon has taught him, the all the ways Qui-Gon has shaped him.  He had tried his best to smooth away every flaw. He had never stopped to consider that every failure was an opportunity to offer compassion.  

Why did the boy inspire such depth of feeling in him? _Perhaps,_ Qui-Gon admits to himself, _because he has always needed me so.  Do we not always love best the ones who need us the most?_ And Qui-Gon has always wanted so badly to be needed.  And yet, perhaps it has always been he who has needed Obi-Wan more.  

One step, then another.

The Force asks him, _Are you ready to let go?_

And Qui-Gon answers that he is.

 

 

 

There are many ways of letting go.

The opening of a hand, allowing sand to slip through one’s fingers.  Dropping a stone into a pool of water. Releasing blades of grass into the wind, allowing them to be carried across a plain.  Pouring water from a cup on the dusty ground.  

Qui-Gon looks inside himself and there is a Temple, with all its rooms and gardens, filled with memories, and inside this Temple, he searches for Obi-Wan.  He walks from room to room, opening doors, peering inside, smiling a little at what he finds. This memory, here, of Obi-Wan carefully pouring tea from the chipped teapot.  Or this one, watching Obi-Wan slowing practicing a kata in a meditation garden.  

Here is a memory, of Obi-Wan winning the senior padawan tournament.  Qui-Gon had never been more proud of him. It had little to do with the way Obi-Wan had slipped past the other boy’s guard to knock his lightsaber out of his hands, and far more to do with the way Obi-Wan had crouched down next to him to offer him a hand.  He had been prouder of Obi-Wan for the grace he had offered to his opponent, by the fact he didn’t get ruffled by insults than he had for the boy’s winning. 

Here is another memory, the last time they shared a meal together in Qui-Gon’s quarters, before that last mission.  Green fruit in a red bowl on the table at Qui-Gon’s elbow. Obi-Wan, sitting across the table, looking at his datapad, absently sipping his tea.  Qui-Gon had looked at him and thought suddenly, _I don’t want this to end_ .  He had known their time together was almost at a close, he has known it and put it off for years.   Obi-Wan is ready. But Qui-Gon finds himself saying, _This mission first.  Then I will tell him.  Just another mission._

One step, then another, and Qui-Gon finds himself by the bells.    

Qui-Gon has heard those bells rung to mark Obi-Wan’s death a thousand times since he went out into the galaxy.  He had sat with Obi-Wan, unconscious in a room in the healers’ ward after Alderath, the mission that had gone so wrong.  He had stood up and walked blindly through the Temple until he found himself under the arch of the bells.  He could feel the way the rope would feel in his hands. He could feel the way the notes of the ancient bells would feel, echoing in his chest. _Let it go,_ he had told himself.  _Let him go._

These are the things he is ready to surrender.  He has carried them around with him for so long, all the fragments of this unshakable love he carries around with him always, locked tight in his chest.  He is ready to lay them down.  

 

 

The Code brings illumination to a Jedi at different places on their journey.  It is not meant to mean only one thing to everyone, for eternity. Seasons pass, and wisdom is revealed slowly, like a bud slowly revealing the blossom of a flower.  Every Jedi must decide what the Code means for themselves. What the tenets mean to them.

The Code speaks of attachment.  Attachment prevents growth. When one hangs on to tightly to the way things are, you are unable to see how things may be.  To learn, to grow. To allow relationships to change and deepen, to end, to fade away. Attachments can blind you because they reveal more about your personal reflection than the other person.  Your focus determines your reality. If you fear losing someone, you will; if you fear harboring an attachment, you will.  

And Qui-Gon has feared his own attachments so greatly that he has allowed that fear to rule him.  He had allowed his attachment to what he wanted for Obi-Wan blind him to what the boy needed from him.  His own attachment to what he wants for Obi-Wan, his own desire for Obi-Wan to become a Jedi knight. For all that he wants for Obi-Wan to become.  He must let go of what his own desires so that he can accept what Obi-Wan already is. The imperfect soul.  

The Code does not speak of love.  Love, Qui-Gon is beginning to realize, love is not something you possess, something that can be lost or taken away.  Love is the compassion you feel and give to others. Not a possession but a choice. An act. A service. And if love isn’t something you have, but what you are willing to give, then it can go on forever.  There is nothing to fear, for it is not something you can lose, or earn, or must become worthy of. Love is something you do. The Code is a reminder of all you do not have to fear, thanks to the Force.

Qui-Gon closes his eyes and lets himself feel the force of all that love flooding through him.  He closes his eyes and lets himself hear all the things he has always wanted to say to Obi-Wan, what Obi-Wan has meant to him.

He releases them all, lets them go. Fingers opening and sand spilling out like rain.  Pebbles dropping in the water. Leaves falling off branches. After all, leaves will grow back again.  He can give all of this up to the Force because it will all come back to him again, the way raindrops drop into the ocean and then become raindrops again.    All this love must have come from the Force. He can offer this up, knowing that it will return to him.

He surrenders it all.

Qui-Gon puts out his hand and touches a bell.   Obi-Wan smiling at him, Obi-Wan at his side, watching a sunset.   He rings another bell. He will give this up to the Force, for safekeeping.  He touches another bell and sets it to ringing, and another, until all he can hear are bells sounding in the air around him, each note a piece of the unshakable love locked in his heart, until his chest is almost empty.  

He walks across the pink and gold marble floors of the Temple, between columns and palisades, through the corridors with the soft lamps that glow in alcoves in the walls, through the gardens with trickling creeks and streams, the sound of water rushing all around, through the classrooms and dojos.  And here, at the end of this hall, a room. He opens the door and here at last is where he has carefully held his love for Obi-Wan, here in his very heart.  

Here are a handful of moments he keeps in his heart.  This one, Obi-Wan asleep against his shoulder. This unbearable tenderness, he cannot take it, he feels too much, he tries to keep it to a muted background noise, but sometimes it roars back to the surface like a wall of water breaking through a dam.  _Be at peace_ , he had whispered to the sleeping boy, and put his hand on his head.

He lets go of his pride in all that Obi-Wan has done, his fear of losing what he loves, and what he is left with is his love for the boy himself.

He surrenders his pride for Obi-Wan’s accomplishments, his own quiet need, and what remains is simply his love for Obi-Wan himself.  His kindness and courage. His eagerness to help, always. His endless compassion, for those who are suffering, for those in need of care.  For Qui-Gon.  

Obi-Wan, who is always saving others, and never saving himself.  And he has always known more than Qui-Gon about letting go.

 _He has taught me about compassion.  He has taught me about letting go._ _Perhaps,_ Qui-Gon thinks, _perhaps now it is time to teach him about holding on._

When he finally stops walking, he finds that he is at Obi-Wan’s door.  

His feet take him inside.  Obi-Wan is an unmoving figure in the bed, surrounded by monitors.  

“Oh, Obi-Wan.  I have missed you,” he says.  He stands close by the bed. He clasps his hands inside the sleeves of his robe so tightly his knuckles go white.  “I have missed your terrible jokes. Would you like to make one now?”

He waits, but Obi-Wan does not answer.  

 _Come back to me,_ Qui-Gon calls out to him.  _There are things I never told you, that I always should have said.  It cannot be too late. It cannot be too late to say them._

Qui-Gon sits at the edge of his bed and clumsily takes his hand.  “I have so much to tell you.”

 

 

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi is letting go.  

The first to go are his deeds, his works, they fall away as easily as snowflakes melting on the ground.  His name, his memories, then his feelings, every last one; anger and grief, all the little flickers of happiness he has ever felt, leaving only joy.  He is complete with that empty-full feeling that he remembers from certain moments; watching a sunset, or reaching the top of the spiral staircase at the Temple.  

The last to go is the yearning he has always seemed to carry with him.  This ache, for something - someone? - he has never quite understood. He is ready to surrender that as well.  No more wanting. Only peace. Now he can almost seem to reach out and touch the feeling, and he can see for what it is.  It is everything that makes him who he is, the binding that contains all in him that is luminous. What allows him to touch the Force.  

He is about to let go of that ache, let it fall along with everything else, when he hears a voice like an anchor, saying his name, holding him back.  He hesitates. 

But the Force will wait for him, he knows.  And there is someone waiting for him.  

He surrenders.  And he hears, somewhere in the unfathomable distance, that somewhere bells are ringing, marking what has passed back into the Force.


End file.
